of which served to break up the musical design and spoil the harmony of its colouring.  Passages that should have been made prominent were slurred over, and others were distorted by faulty time or want of precision.  Even to-day, when our orchestras are seasoned by years of study, I should often be unable to follow Wagner’s thought throughout a whole scene if I did not happen to know the score, for the outline of a melody is often smothered by the accompaniment, and so its sentiment is lost.  If we still find obscurity of meaning in Wagner’s works you can imagine how much worse it was then.  But what did it matter?  I used to feel myself stirred with passions that were not human:  some magnetic influence seemed to thrill me with both pleasure and pain, and I felt invigorated and happy, for it brought me strength.  It seemed as if my child’s heart were torn from me and the heart of a hero put in its place.

Nor was I alone in the experience.  On the faces of the people round about me I saw the reflection of my own emotions.  What was the meaning of it?  The audience consisted chiefly of poor and commonplace people, whose faces were lined with the wear and tear of a life without interest or ideals; their minds were dull and heavy, and yet here they responded to the divine spirit of the music.  There is no more impressive sight than that of thousands of people held spellbound by a melody; it is by turns sublime, grotesque, and touching.

What a place in my life those Sunday concerts held!  All the week I lived for those two hours; and when they were over I thought about them until the following Sunday.  The fascination of Wagner’s music for youth has often troubled people; they think it poisons the thoughts and dulls the activities.  But the generation that was then intoxicated by Wagner does not seem to have shown signs of demoralisation since.  Why do not people understand that if we had need of that music it was not because it was death to us, but life.  Cramped by the artificiality of a town, far from action, or nature, or any strong or real life, we expanded under the influence of this noble music—­music which flowed from a heart filled with understanding of the world and the breath of Nature.  In Die Meistersinger, in Tristan, and in Siegfried, we went to find the joy, the love, and the vigour that we so lacked.

At the time when I was feeling Wagner’s seductiveness so strongly there were always some carping people among my elders ready to quench my admiration and say with a superior smile:  “That is nothing.  One can’t judge Wagner at a concert.  You must hear him in the opera-house at Bayreuth.”  Since then I have been several times to Bayreuth; I have seen Wagner’s works performed in Berlin, in Dresden, in Munich, and in other German towns, but I have never again felt the old intoxication.  People are wrong to pretend that closer acquaintance with a fine work adds to one’s enjoyment of it.  It may throw light upon it, but it nips one’s