ion. As Parsifal
moves the Chalice softly above the kneeling assembly, a white dove
descends from on high and floats above his head. Kundry, with her
eyes turned toward all these luminous things, sinks softly upon
the altar-steps, the life-giving Grail having given her life too,
in the form of desired death. With the interwoven Grail and Faith
and Spear music letting down as if a curtain of silver and azure
and gold, the poem closes.

One has heard it objected, as at least strange, that when the search
after knowledge is so unquestionably meritorious, and study, as we
count it, one of the conditions of progress, and learning a lamp
to our feet, an ideal should be made of total ignorance, such as
Parsifal's. But surely the point is a different one. The point is
not Parsifal's ignorance--except, perhaps, in so far as it made
for innocence--but the qualities which he possessed, and which one
may possess, in spite of ignorance. It is a comparison of values
which is established. Through the object-lesson of Parsifal, Wagner
is saying, after his fashion and inversely, what Saint Paul says:
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels,... though I
have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all
knowledge,... and have not charity, I am nothing;... it availeth
me nothing." The supremacy of charity, love of others, is the point
illustrated.

One tributary to the mighty stream of our interest in the opera
of Parsifal has its spring in the date of its appearance. It comes
as the poet's last word. What a procession of heroes has passed
before us--beautiful, brave, romantic,--how fit, every one, to
capture the imagination! Towering a little above the rest, Siegfried,
the _Uebermensch_, the Overman. But finally, with the effect of a
conclusion reached, a judgement, the hero whose heroism differs in
quality from that of the others, the lowly of heart, whose dominant
trait is _Mitleid_, compassion, sympathy with the woes of others,
who pities swans and women and the sinful and the suffering, and
gives his strength to helping them, and sanctifies himself for
their sake.

THE RHINE-GOLD

THE RHINE-GOLD

In the beginning was the Gold,--beautiful, resplendent, its obvious
and simple part to reflect sunlight and be a joy to the eyes;
containing, however, apparently of its very nature, the following
mysterious quality: a ring fashioned from it would endow its possessor
with what is vaunted as immeasurable pow