In it, after the servants were gone to bed, we burnt the book containing the "Areopagita" of Graziani, and the Stradivarius fiddle.

The diaries of Temple I had already destroyed, and wish that I could as easily blot out their foul and debasing memories from my mind.

I shall probably be blamed by those who would exalt art at the expense of everything else, for burning a unique violin.
This reproach I am content to bear.

Though I am not unreasonably superstitious, and have no sympathy for that potential pantheism to which Sir John Maltravers surrendered his intellect, yet I felt so great an aversion to this violin that I would neither suffer it to remain at Worth, nor pass into other hands.

Miss Sophia was entirely at one with me on this point.