te sings, dreams, explodes, resounds;
it defies the flight of the most skillful forms; it has, like the
orchestra, its brazen harmonies; like it, and without the least
preparation, it can give to the evening breeze its cloud of fairy chords
and vague melodies. I need neither theatre, nor box scene, nor much
staging. I have not to tire myself out at long rehearsals. I want
neither a hundred, fifty, nor twenty players. I do not even need any
music. A grand hall, a grand pianoforte, and I am master of a grand
audience. I show myself and am applauded; my memory awakens, dazzling
fantasies grow beneath my fingers. Enthusiastic acclamations answer
them. I sing Schubert's "Ave Maria," or Beethoven's "Adelaida" on the
piano, and all hearts tend toward me, all breasts hold their breath....
Then come luminous bombs, the banquet of this grand firework, and the
cries of the public, and the flowers and the crowns that rain around
the priest of harmony, shuddering on his tripod; and the young beauties,
who, all in tears, in their divine confusion kiss the hem of his
cloak; and the sincere homage drawn from serious minds and the feverish
applause torn from many; the lofty brows that bow down, and the narrow
hearts, marveling to find themselves expanding '.... It is a dream, one
of those golden dreams one has when one is called Liszt or Paganini."

That such a man as this, brilliant in wit, extravagant in habit and
opinion, courted for his personal fascination by every one greatest in
rank and choicest in intellect from his prodigious youth to his ripe
manhood, should suddenly cease from display at the moment when his
popularity was at its highest, when no rival was in being, is a
remarkable trait in Dr. Franz Liszt's remarkable life. But this he did
in 1849, by settling in Weimar as conductor of the court theatre, his
age then being thirty-eight years.

V.

Liszt closed his career as a virtuoso, and accepted a permanent
engagement at Weimar, with the distinct purpose of becoming identified
with the new school of music which was beginning to express itself so
remarkably through Richard Wagner. His new position enabled him to bring
works before the world which would otherwise have had but little chance
of seeing the light of day, and he rapidly produced at brief intervals
eleven works, either for the first time, or else revived from what had
seemed a dead failure. Among these works were "Lohengrin," "Rienzi," and
"Tannhauser" by Wa