as men, Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be incapable of a noble tempo or of a lento in life and action—­ think of Balzac, for instance,—­unrestrained workers, almost destroying themselves by work; antinomians and rebels in manners, ambitious and insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all of them finally shattering and sinking down at the Christian cross (and with right and reason, for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an anti-Christian philosophy?);—­on the whole, a boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach their century—­and it is the century of the masses—­the conception “higher man.” . . .  Let the German friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to whether there is anything purely German in the Wagnerian art, or whether its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from super-German sources and impulses:  in which connection it may not be underrated how indispensable Paris was to the development of his type, which the strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most decisive time—­and how the whole style of his proceedings, of his self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in sight of the French socialistic original.  On a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be found, to the honour of Richard Wagner’s German nature, that he has acted in everything with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation than a nineteenth-century Frenchman could have done—­owing to the circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the French;—­ perhaps even the most remarkable creation of Richard Wagner is not only at present, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to the whole latter-day Latin race:  the figure of Siegfried, that very free man, who is probably far too free, too hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too anti-Catholic for the taste of old and mellow civilized nations.  He may even have been a sin against Romanticism, this anti-Latin Siegfried:  well, Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old sad days, when—­anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into politics—­he began, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to preach, at least, the way to Rome, if not to walk therein.—­That these last words may not be misunderstood, I will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what I mean —­what I mean counter to the “last Wagner” and his Parsifal music:—­

—­Is this our mode?—­From German heart came this vexed ululating?  From German body, this self-lacerating?  Is ours this priestly hand-dilation, This incense-fuming exaltation?  Is ours this faltering, falling, shambling, This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling?  This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly false enraptured heaven-o’erspringing?—­Is this our mode?—­Think well!—­ye still wait for admission—­For what ye hear is Rome—­ ROME’S faith by intuition!