have longed passionately for another.  I do not propose to discuss his conducting in detail.  Under him the band has played with steady, unrelenting slovenliness and inaccuracy; the music has been robbed of its rhythm, life, and colour; and many of the finest numbers—­as, for example, the Valkyrie’s Ride, the prelude to the third act of “Siegfried,” the march in “The Dusk of the Gods”—­have been deliberately massacred.  One cannot criticise such conducting:  it does not rise near enough to competence to be worthy of criticism.  But one has a right to ask why this young man, who should be serving an apprenticeship in some obscure opera-house, is palmed off on the public as “the best artist procurable”?  He scarcely seems to possess ordinary intelligence.  I had the honour of being inadvertently presented to him, and he asked me, should I write anything about Bayreuth, to say that he objected very much to the Englishmen who came in knickerbockers—­in bicycle costume.  When I mildly suggested that if they came without knickerbockers or the customary alternative he would have better reason to complain, he asserted that he and his family had a great respect for the theatre, and it shocked them to find so many Englishmen who did not respect it.  I mention this because it shows clearly the spirit in which Bayreuth is now being worked.  The Wagner family are not shocked when Wagner’s music is caricatured by an octogenarian tenor or a twenty-stone prima donna; they are shocked when in very hot weather a few people wear the costume in which they suffer least discomfort.  So the place is becoming a mere fashionable resort, that would cause Wagner all the pangs of Amfortas could he come here again.  The women seem to change their dresses for every act of the opera; the prices of lodgings, food, and drinks are rapidly rising to the Monte Carlo standard; a clergyman has been imported to preach on Sunday to the English visitors; one sees twenty or thirty fashionable divorce cases in process of incubation; and Siegfried Wagner conducts.  With infinite labour Wagner built this magnificent theatre, the most perfect machine in the world for the reproduction of great art-works; and Mrs. Wagner has given it as a toy to her darling son that he may amuse himself by playing with it.  And, like a baby when it gets a toy, Siegfried Wagner is breaking it to pieces to see what there is inside.  Unless it is taken from him until he has spent a few years in learning to play upon instead of with it, Bayreuth will quickly be deserted.  Already it is in decadence.  I shall always come to Bayreuth, for reasons already given; but fashions change, and the people who come here because it is the fashion will not be long in finding other resorts; and those who want only to see the music-plays adequately performed will have learnt that this is not the place for them.  With one voice the ablest German, French, and Dutch critics are crying against the present state of things; and it is certainly the duty of every English lover of