PETER VISCHER 
violin. This is not surprising, for there was a 
general tendency both in Italian and German art 
to furnish mythical personages with modern musi- 
cal instruments. Liibke reminds us, for instance, 
>f the Apollo in Raphael's “ Parnassus.” 
Of the other two plaquettes to which we have 
referred, one is to be found in the Hamburg Mu- 
seum, and the other was, till 1807, in St. Blasien 
in the Black Forest, but is now preserved in the 
institution of St. Paul in Carinthia. They are 
almost exactly the same with the Berlin copy. 
But the latter has a poetical inscription above on 
the upper edge which is absent from the example 
at St. Paul. | | 
The inscription, which a recollection of the fond- 
ness evinced by the young Peter for the study of 
poetry inclines us to attribute to his pen, runs as 
follows : 
ORPHEA CVM SILVIS FLVVIOS ETSAXA MOVENTE 
SRECIA LAETEOS FERT ADYSSE LAVIS 
EVRYDICN ILLIC VITAE REVOCASSE PRIORI 
SERVASSET STIGIO SI MODO PACTA IOVI ; 
which, being roughly interpreted, is to the effect 
that Orpheus, moving, according to the Grecian 
fable, rocks and woods and rivers by his music, 
came to the Infernal Regions, and there had quite 
won back Eurydice to life if only he had observed 
the conditions of the king of Hades. 
The Hamburg exemplar has this inscription 
also, with a few literal variations, as, for instance, 
04