Illustrated London News Vol 56 (page 1/5)

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Pheasants

The collection of living pheasants belonging to the Zoological Society of London has just been enriched by the arrival of fine examples of the males of two new species. At the meeting of the society, on Thursday 24th ult. [i.e. March 1870], Mr. Sclater read a paper concerning these remarkable [...] [more...] [$]

Musical Instruments at the South Kensington Museum: R.—Spinet

A Spinet is a sort of harpsichord—that is, a musical instrument with a keyboard but in which the keys are plucked rather than monked with a hammer as in a piano. The strings in a spinet go off at an angle, [...] [more...] [$]

Holy Trinity, York

See 353-Alms-Box,-Skipwith for more details [$]

Musical Instruments at the South Kensington Museum: K.—Violin.

“The Earl of Warwick sends a boxwood violin, carved with woodland scenes, bearing the date of 1578, which was given by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, and which our present Queen [Victoria] examined with particular interest when she visited the museum a fortnight ago.” (p. 368)

“Our illustration marked K represents the boxwood violin, bearing the arms of Queen Elizabeth [the first] and the Earl of Leicester engraved in silver on its finger-board, to which we have referred. It is described both by Hawkins and Burney, in their books on the history of music, having belonged to the Duke of Dorset, at the sale of whose furniture it was bought by Mr. Bremner, in the Strand. It is two feet long from the extremity of the tail-pin to the dragon’s head, and carved with a woodman cutting at the fallen branches of an oak, and with another man beating down acorns for hogs to eat, besides much foliage and other ornamentation. From the thickness of the wood and from its encumbrance with these decorations, the tone of the violin is but dull and sluggish; and the neck, being too thick for the hand to grasp, has a hole for the player’s thumb, by which the hand is so confined that the range of fiddling performance must be very limited. Upon the nut which fastens the tail-piece is the date 1578, with the initials J. P., which may be [more...] [$]

A closer crop of a portrait of Sir Charles Dickens

The portrait is from an obituary of Sir Charles Dickens published the week after he died, in June 1870. This version is cropped so you just have his head, and is an aspect ratio suitable for a desktop or tablet wallpaper (8:5 aspect ratio). [more...] [$]