ty of the pictures in the "Ring," and
especially in "Siegfried," it would be unnecessary to say more about
it now. That quality is their old-world atmosphere, their power of
filling us with a sense of the old time before us. When the fire plays
round Bruennhilde's fell--Hinde Fell, Morris calls it--lighting the icy
tops of the farthest hills, or when Mime and Alberich squabble in the
dark of early morning at the mouth of Fafner's hole, or again when the
Wanderer comes in and scarifies Mime out of his wits, we are taken
back to the remotest and dimmest past, to the beginnings of time, to a
time that never existed save in the imagination of our forebears. This
may be partly the result of our unconscious perception of the fact
that these things never happen nowadays, and partly the result of our
having been familiar with the story of Bruennhilde and the gods since
earliest boyhood; but it is in the main due to Wagner's intense
historical sense, his sense of the past, and to his unapproached power
of expressing in music any feeling or combination of feelings he
experienced. So cunningly do music and scenery work together that we
credit the one with what the other has done; but, wonderful though the
pictures of "Siegfried" are, there cannot be a doubt that the
atmosphere we discover in them reaches us through the ear from the
orchestra. Besides giving us a series of singularly apposite and
significant pictures, Wagner has reproduced the very breath and colour
of the old sagas; he has re-created the atmosphere of a time that
never was; and it is this remote atmosphere which lends to
"Siegfried" and all the "Ring" a great part of their enchantment.
Fancy what it might have been, this long exposition of sheer
Schopenhauerism in three dramas and a fore-play! imagine what Parry or
Stanford or Mackenzie would have made of it! And then think of what
the "Ring" actually is, and especially of the splendour and weirdness
of some parts the "dulness" of which moves dull people to dull
grumbling. For example, a great many persons share Mime's wish for the
Wanderer to go off almost as soon as he comes on, "else no Wanderer
can he be called." They tell us that this scene breaks the action,
neglecting the trifling fact that were it omitted the remainder of the
act would be inconsequent nonsense, only worthy to rank with the
librettos of English musical critics, and that the truth happens to be
that nearly the whole of the subsequent drama gr