A GREEN and gold Harp that once belonged to George IV., and is now in the possession of Mr. Edward Joseph, of London. It is 5 feet 3 inches high, 2 feet 6 inches in extreme width, and 1 foot 9 inches wide at the base. It was included in the characteristic Louis Seize Historic Room, in the Music Loan Collection, Royal Albert Hall, 1885. This room, one of three, was so contrived as to display the musical instruments in social use with such surroundings of furniture, paintings, etc., as would be true for the period. These Historic Rooms, suggested by Mr. Alfred Maskell, the official superintendent of the Music Loan Collection, were arranged with great knowledge and taste by Mr. George Donaldson. They represented an English apartment of the time of George I., a Tudor apartment that included Queen Elizabeth's virginal, and a Louis Seize apartment that, with the Harp in the accompanying Plate, contained also the beautifully painted Ruckers clavecin or harpsichord (lent by Viscount Powerscourt) that had belonged to the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. There is a photograph of this harpsichord in the Catalogue of the South Kensington Collection, 1872, and a wood engraving of the Louis Seize room, showing both harpsichord and harp, in the Art Journal for August 1885.

The first pedal mechanism was invented by Hochbrucker, a Bavarian, about 1720; by it he rendered the harp fit for changes of key, possible before, and that only partially, by clumsy contrivances. By using a pedal to raise each open string a semitone, accomplished by pressure upon the strings, he gave the harp eight major and five complete minor scales—also three descending minor. The Cousineaus, who were Frenchmen, and father and son, superseded the contrivance of Hochbrucker by another that grasped or pinched the strings with pieces of metal on either side, and also by slides raising or lowering the bridge-pins. By doubling the pedals and mechanism, and changing the key of the open strings from E? to C?, they, about 1782, produced the first double-action harp. It was, however, left for Sebastian Erard to perfect the harp by means of a fork mechanism of most ingenious contrivance. He began with the single-action harp about 1786, turning his attention to the double-action in 1801. It was not, however, until 1810 that he succeeded in producing the culmination of his various improvements in a harp of great beauty of tone, with seven pedals and two transpositions, the semitone and the whole tone, permitting performance in any key without change of fingering. In spite of these important inventions the harp has almost lost position as a solo instrument. It has, however, been taken advantage of by modern composers, who have adopted it, with charming effect, as an orchestral instrument.

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