found in the permission given him by the sympathetic
music publisher, Schlesinger, to write for his _Gazette Musicale_ to
which he contributed many brilliant articles. In these he could at
least do in words what he was not allowed to do otherwise. He could
disclose the splendor of German music, and never before has anyone
written of Mozart, Weber, and Beethoven with keener appreciation or
profounder thought. Of the last named he proposed to write a
comprehensive biography and entered into correspondence with a
publisher in Germany.[A] He confronted the formal culture of the Latin
races with the character of the German mind, as it were the head of
the Medusa, and the consciousness of his mission kept up his spirits
under the most trying circumstances. With Paris as an art centre he
had done. Like Mozart's "Idomeneo" to the Opera Seria, "Rienzi" was
his last tribute to the Grand Opera. They have forever extinguished
the genre in style by exhausting its capabilities.

[Footnote A: The letter appears in the book entitled "Mosaics,"
published in Leipzig, 1881.]

In the meantime "Rienzi" had been accepted at Dresden, and he now
hoped through Meyerbeer's influence to see it also accepted by the
Grand Opera. The director, however, had been so well pleased with the
"Flying Dutchman" that he wished to appropriate the poem for himself,
or rather for another composer. In order therefore not to lose
everything, Wagner sold the copyright for Paris for 500 francs and it
soon after appeared as "Vaisseau Phantome." It naturally followed that
for the present his most urgent task was to complete the work for
himself and in his own way. The performance of the "Freischuetz" had
increased his ambition and his other experiences had completely
disgusted him with the modern Babylon. The romance--for such it
was--was soon finished. He had allowed a beautiful myth simply to tell
its own story and had avoided all the nonsense of the opera with its
finales, duets, and ballets, wishing simply to reveal to his
countrymen once more the divine attributes of the soul. But now that
the romance was to be set to music he feared that his art might have
deserted him, so long had it remained unused. However the work
progressed rapidly enough. He had in his mind as the main motive of
the work, _Senta's_ ballad, and around it clustered at once the whole
musical arrangement of the material. The Sailor's Chorus and the
Spinning Song were popular melodies, for