wonder that both sides were disappointed?  These amiable directors never quite recovered from the honour of having Mendelssohn to conduct for them; and they undoubtedly looked upon Wagner as scarcely a next-best.  The days of oratorio had by no means finished yet; oratorio was the thing; an instrumental concert was very well for a change once in a while, provided there were plenty of Italian opera airs to sugar the nasty pill; Haydn was the last word in symphony, the homage paid to Beethoven being the merest lip-worship.  The Philharmonic was certainly no place for Wagner; yet, it must be insisted, there was no real reason for grumbling on either side.  Wagner got his money; the society had one of the best seasons on its record.

It is a pity that he who might have been the most valuable witness in the matter should prove at every point to be the least trustworthy.  Ferdinand Praeger had known Wagner in his university days.  They seem to have been barely acquainted; but the moment Praeger found Wagner was coming he scented advertisement for himself, as is usual with his kind—­the kind being the foreign professor settled in London.  He will have it that he arranged the whole business; but the terrible truth is that he seems to have done no more than make his compatriot comfortable in our dreary city.  Certainly he did that, and Wagner repaid it by inviting him to stay in Zurich, and the visit came off duly.  Sainton, who was by way of being a noted violinist, was head and front of the offending from the directors’ point of view—­perhaps in Wagner’s view likewise.  The directors were, to speak as the vulgar, in a mortal stew.  There was a small audience for orchestral functions in those days, and Dr. Wylde, a worthy academic gentleman of no musical distinction whatever, had started a rival series of concerts, and had in this year, 1855, engaged no less a personage than Berlioz to conduct.  A rival was looked for; and since the directors knew little or nothing of continental doings, as soon as Sainton told them one Richard Wagner was their man, they agreed that negotiations should be opened.  Wagner came; and the visit ought to be interesting to English musicians, for at Portland Terrace he scored part of the Valkyrie.  Moreover, he met Berlioz at dinner; but never those twain could meet in other than a formal way.  Neither liked the other; neither liked the other’s music; their rivalry in London mattered not two sous to the one or one pfennig to the other, but they were both disappointed men seeking appreciation and approbation on the continent.  Wagner had tried in Paris and Berlioz had tried in Germany.  Wagner worked stubbornly the whole time, and was mightily glad to get back to Zurich in July.  The episode is of small importance in Wagner’s life; but the attitude of the Press naturally filled him with disgust.  He said if he had paid the critics he would have received “favourable notices,” and when I reflect on the smallness of the critics’ official salaries and the splendour in which some of them lived I cannot but think he was right:  the money necessary to keep up big establishments had to be found somewhere—­where?