and designed the Tenth, which,
according to his Sketches, was to show what all great poetic minds
longed for--the union of the tragic spirit of the Greeks with the
religious of the modern world. It was the same high goal that Wagner
touched in the "Nibelungenring" and attained in "Parcival." The
English at that time were even less disposed to appreciate his efforts
than the Germans, and the Jewish spirit of their church inclined them
to look with suspicion upon the "Jew Persecutor." He also found at
first some difficulties in the rushing style of execution, which was a
tradition from Mendelssohn, who was idolized in England. His untiring
energy, however, prevailed everywhere where art was at stake, and the
last of the eight concerts, in which Mozart's C Major Symphony and
Beethoven's Eighth were given, and the "Tannhaeuser Overture," was
encored, brought him, in a storm of applause, compensation for the
unworthy calumniations of the press, notably, of the _Times_.
Notwithstanding all this, he could not be induced to re-visit London
till twenty years later. The invitations from America he declined at
once.

His art-susceptibility at that time was very keen and active. He
remarked to a German admirer, in the autumn of 1856, that two new
subjects occupied his mind during the Nibelungen-work, which he could
with difficulty repress. The one was "Tristan," with which Gottfried's
brilliant epic had already made him familiar in composing the
"Walkuere," and the other, probably, was "Parcival," whose Good Friday
enchantment had impressed him many years before. In October Liszt
visited him again, and heard the "Walkuere" on the piano. A musical
journal in Leipzig was emboldened to speak of a forthcoming event that
would agitate the whole musical world. With what joyous cheerfulness
he composed "Siegfried," and his Anvil-song is shown in a letter about
Liszt's symphonic poems, which appeared in the following spring.
Accident and irresistible impulse, however, led immediately to the
completion of "Tristan and Isolde."

The seeming hopelessness of success in his endeavors at times
discouraged him. "When I thus laid down one score after the other,
never again to take them up, I seemed to myself like a sleep-walker
who is unconscious of his actions," he states. And yet he had to seek
the "daylight" of the German opera, from which he had fled with his
Nibelungen, if he would remain familiar with the active life of his
art. He propo