audience entirely removed from the atmosphere of vulgar theatrical shows.  After many delays Wagner’s hopes were attained, and in the summer of 1876 a gathering of the principal celebrities of Europe was present to criticise the fully perfected fruit of the composer’s theories and genius.  This festival was so recent, and its events have been the subject of such elaborate comment, that further description will be out of place here.

As a great musical poet, rather epic than dramatic in his powers, there can be no question as to Wagner’s rank.  The performance of the “Nibelungenring,” covering “Rheingold,” “Die Walkueren,” “Siegfried,” and “Goetterdaemmerung,” was one of the epochs of musical Germany.  However deficient Wagner’s skill in writing for the human voice, the power and symmetry of his conceptions, and his genius in embodying them in massive operatic forms, are such as to storm even the prejudices of his opponents.  The poet-musician rightfully claims that in his music-drama is found that wedding of two of the noblest of the arts, pregnantly suggested by Shakespeare: 

     “If Music and sweet Poetry both agree,
     As they must needs, the sister and the brother;
     One God is God of both, as poets feign.”

THE END.