"_Le Luthier de Crémone_," observed EUGENIUS, "is a pathetic story."

"Indeed, EUGENIUS," replied YORICK, "it is extremely touching. I
protest I never read, or hear it, without emotion."

"The violin," pursued EUGENIUS, "most sensitive, and, as it were,
soulful of human instruments, lends itself, with particular aptness,
to the purposes of literary pathos."

"Dear Sensibility!" said I, "source inexhausted of all that is
precious in our (poetical) joys, or costly in our (dramatic) sorrows!"

"It were well," continued YORICK, drily, "if it were also the source
inexhausted of more that is quick in our sympathy, and practical in
our beneficence. It is scarcely in the columns of the daily news-sheet
that Sensibility usually seeks its much-sought stimulus. And yet but
lately, in the corner of my paper, I encountered a piteous story that
'dear Sensibility' (had it been more romantically environed) might
deliciously have luxuriated in. I protest 'twas as pathetic as
those of MARIA LE FEVRE, or LA FLEUR. It was headed, "Sad Death of a
Well-known Violinist."

"Prithee, dear YORICK, let me hear it," cried EUGENIUS.

"'Twas but the prosaic report of a Coroner's Inquest," pursued YORICK.
"Sensibility would probably have 'skipped' the sordid circumstance.
'FREDERICK MARTIN, aged seventy-two, a well-known Violinist, and
Professor of Music, formerly a member of the orchestra of the Italian
Opera at Her Majesty's and Covent Garden Theatres,' found life too