lessly buried beneath the ruins of his own
contrivances" (_Oper und Drama_, 1851).]

[Footnote 71: Letter from Berlioz to Ferrand.]

[Footnote 72: "The chief characteristics of my music are passionate
expression, inward warmth, rhythmic in pulses, and unforeseen effects.
When I speak of passionate expression, I mean an expression that
desperately strives to reproduce the inward feeling of its subject, even
when the theme is contrary to passion, and deals with gentle emotions or
the deepest calm. It is this kind of expression that may be found in
_L'Enfance du Christ_, and, above all, in the scene of _Le Ciel_ in the
_Damnation de Faust_ and in the _Sanctus_ of the _Requiem_" (_Memoires_,
II, 361).]

Whatever one may think of this volcanic force, of this torrential stream
of youth and passion, it is impossible to deny them; one might as well
deny the sun.

And I shall not dwell on Berlioz's love of Nature, which, as M.
Prudhomme shows us, is the soul of a composition like the _Damnation_
and, one might say, of all great compositions. No musician, with the
exception of Beethoven, has loved Nature so profoundly. Wagner himself
did not realise the intensity of emotion which she roused in
Berlioz,[73] and how this feeling impregnated the music of the
_Damnation_, of _Romeo_, and of _Les Troyens_.

[Footnote 73: "So you are in the midst of melting glaciers in your
_Niebelungen_! To be writing in the presence of Nature herself must be
splendid. It is an enjoyment which I am denied. Beautiful landscapes,
lofty peaks, or great stretches of sea, absorb me instead of evoking
ideas in me. I feel, but I cannot express what I feel. I can only paint
the moon when I see its reflection in the bottom of a well" (Berlioz to
Wagner, 10 September, 1855).]

But this genius had other characteristics which are less well known,
though they are not less unusual. The first is his sense of pure beauty.
Berlioz's exterior romanticism must not make us blind to this. He had a
Virgilian soul; and if his colouring recalls that of Weber, his design
has often an Italian suavity. Wagner never had this love of beauty in
the Latin sense of the word. Who has understood the Southern nature,
beautiful form, and harmonious movement like Berlioz? Who, since Gluck,
has recognised so well the secret of classical beauty? Since _Orfeo_ was
composed, no one has carved in music a bas-relief so perfect as the
entrance of Andromache in the second act of _Les Troy