eets; yet he expects the French to find him employment in
preference to their own countrymen, their own flesh and blood. One can
overlook that, however; and the story is pathetic and beautifully
written. _A Pilgrimage to Beethoven_ is, in its way, a masterpiece. It
also is full of self-revelation; some of it conscious, some
unconscious. _A Happy Evening_ is another charming thing; the skit on
how Rossini's _Stabat Mater_ came to be composed is amusing, and is
cruel with a cruelty that was justified. The other articles are of no
particular value, save, perhaps, that on the overture; they are of an
ephemeral character and were evidently concocted when the writer was
fully aware he was writing for French readers, and if he hurt French
feelings or vanity, a French editor wouldn't print, wouldn't publish,
wouldn't pay.

The next production of any importance is his autobiographical sketch,
and of this nothing need be said. So much of it as seemed to me
needful has been utilized in this book. The account of the bringing
home of Weber's remains to Dresden from London has a perennial
interest. We know how Wagner idolized his mighty predecessor, and can
imagine the ardour with which he threw himself into this work.
Seemingly insuperable obstacles, most of them placed in the way
through the native stupidity and perversity of German and English
officialdom, had to be overridden, and Wagner triumphed. The speech
delivered on the occasion of the re-interment is
characteristic--exceptionally so even for Wagner of this period,
1844--in its assertion of the Germanity of Weber and Weber's music;
and his deep joy that at last the German musician's bones should
repose in German earth. This topic of Germanism haunted Wagner for
years, and I may have a little to say about it later. The account of
the 1846 rendering of the Choral Symphony is the most masterly
exposition of the right and the wrong way of playing orchestral music
to be found in any language. Wagner's method was, after all, very
simple: the conductor had to understand and feel the music aright, and
then pains, pains, never-ending pains must be expended on coaxing,
persuading, bullying or in some other way getting the band to
reproduce precisely what he felt.

We now reach the mass of theatrical and philosophical writings on
opera, drama, and, indeed, art generally. I need do nothing more than
give the fundamental basis of them all, the one point which he argues
in a thousand