fore the
footlights two of the darkest pictures in the annals of Catholicism, nor
has he scrupled to bring high mass and chorale on the boards."

Wagner, the last of the great German composers, can not find words too
scathing and bitter to mark his condemnation of Meyerbeer. Perhaps his
extreme aversion finds its psychological reason in the circumstance that
his own early efforts were in the sphere of Meyerbeer and Hale-vy, and
from his present point of view he looks back with disgust on what he
regards as the sins of his youth. The fairest of the German estimates of
the composer, who not only cast aside the national spirit and methods,
but offended his countrymen by devoting himself to the French stage, is
that of Vischer, an eminent writer on aasthetics: "Notwithstanding
the composer's remarkable talent for musical drama, his operas
contain sometimes too much, sometimes too little--too much in the
subject-matter, external adornment, and effective 'situations'--too
little in the absence of poetry, ideality, and sentiment (which are
essential to a work of art), as well as in the unnatural and constrained
combinations of the plot."

But despite the fact that Meyerbeer's operas contain such strange scenes
as phantom nuns dancing, girls bathing, sunrise, skating, gunpowder
explosions, a king playing the flute, and the prima donna leading a
goat, dramatic music owes to him new accents of genuine pathos and an
addition to its resources of rendering passionate emotions. Through
much that is merely showy and meretricious there come frequent bursts of
genuine musical power and energy, which give him a high and unmistakable
rank, though he has had less permanent influence in molding and
directing the development of musical art than any other composer who has
had so large a place in the annals of his time.

The last twelve years of Meyerbeer's life were spent, with the exception
of brief residences in Germany and Italy, in Paris, the city of his
adoption, where all who were distinguished in art and letters paid their
court to him. When he was seized with his fatal illness he was hard at
work on "L'Africaine," for which Scribe had also furnished the libretto.
His heart was set on its completion, and his daily prayer was that his
life might be spared to finish it. But it was not to be. He died May 2,
1864. The same morning Rossini called to inquire after the health of the
sick man, equally his friend and rival. When he heard the