g all the tones
which are sleeping in our hearts, cabined, cribbed, confined, so that
those tones, awakened and set free, dart aloft in fiery streams,
gladsome and happy, and we taste of the bliss of that paradise whence
the voices come--I say that, in that far-off realm, the Poet and the
Musician are intimately-allied members of one and the same Church: for
the "secret" of poetry and of music is one and the same, and opens to
both the portals of the Inner Sanctuary.'

"_Ferdinand_. 'I hear my dear old Ludwig trying to formulate the laws
of art in dim and mystic phrases; and I must say, that the gulf which
seemed to lie between poet and composer, begins to look much narrower
than it did.'

"_Ludwig_. 'Let me try to express my idea about the true essentials of
Opera in as few words as possible. A proper opera, in my opinion, is
one in which the music springs directly out of the poem, as a necessary
sequence, or consequence.'

"_Ferdinand_. 'I don't quite understand that, as yet.'

"_Ludwig_. 'Is not music the mysterious language of a higher
spirit-realm, whose wondrous accents make their way into our souls,
awaking in them a higher Intensivity of life? All passions contend
together, shimmering in bright armour, and then merge and sink into an
ineffable longing which fills our being. This is the effect (not, perhaps,
to be more clearly expressed in words) of _Instrumental_ music. But Music,
to enter wholly into our lives, must take those visions of hers which she
thus brings with her, and, clothing them in words and actions, speak to
us of _particular_ passions and events. Very well! Can the vulgar and
the common-place be spoken of in those accents of glory? Can Music tell
us of anything other than the wonders and the mysteries of that realm
from whence she comes to us with those magic tones of hers? Let the
poet equip himself for a bold flight into the land of romance. There
he will find the Marvellous, which it is for him to bring into this
work-a-day world, so living and glowing in brilliant colouring that we
accept it as true without hesitation. So that--as if carried out of
this arid every-day life in some blissful dream--we go wandering along
the flowery paths of that happy country, and, forgetting everything
else for the time, understand its language--which is what the mighty
voice of Music speaks.'

"_Ferdinand_. 'Then it is the Romantic Opera, with its fairies and
spirits, its prodigies and transformations,