stic love. Then he writes a pasquinade against the
Jews, and musical Jewry pays him homage all the more by purchasing the
Baireuth certificates. He proves that all our Hofkapellmeisters are
mere artisans, and behold, they organize Wagner-clubs and recruit
troops for Baireuth. Opera-singers and theatre directors, whose
performances Wagner most cruelly condemns, follow his footsteps
wherever he appears and are delighted if he salutes them. He brands
our conservatories as being spoiled and neglected institutes, and the
scholars of the Vienna conservatory form in line before Richard Wagner
and make a subscription to present the master with a token of esteem."

Ah, yes; but this "luck" was the result of his close search for what
was true and real.

This moral dignity, which asks for nothing but the truth, gradually
drew toward Wagner many estimable friends, among them, through the
"Meistersinger" performance in Munich, that simple citizen who
organized in Mannheim the first of those Wagner-clubs that called into
existence for us the high castle of art and the ideal--"Baireuth."

With that work Wagner had made the last hopeful attempt to improve the
domestic stage. The experiences gained in this effort disclosed to
him with distinct clearness the radically inartistic and un-German
qualities of the theatre, which outwardly and inwardly, morally as
well as spiritually, exerted an equally pernicious influence. But
while completely alienating himself from it and planning only to "rear
with considerate haste his gigantic edifice of four divisions," and
thus obtain a stage free from all commercial interests, consecrated
only to the ideal of the nation and the human mind, he yet felt
impelled once more to withdraw with firm hand the veil from the actual
social and art conditions of the nation, and wrote "Judaism in Music."

A simple pamphlet has rarely set all circles of society in such
commotion as did this. It was like the awakening conscience of
the nation, only that its mental stupor prevented the immediate
comprehension of the new and deeply conciliatory spirit which here
presented itself, at once to heal and to save. It was a national deed
clearly to disclose this unseemly shopkeeper's spirit which attempts
to drag to the mercantile level even the highest concerns of humanity.
At the same time there came to some a conception of how deep and
great, how overwhelming this German spirit must be, that it not only
forces such al