proffering him such wealth and honor as were not for any other
living artist.

A theater was built for the presentation of his productions alone; the
lovers of music from every nation made Bayreuth a place of pilgrimage.

When the man died--passed peacefully away, supported by the arms of the
one woman he had loved--the daughter of Liszt--the art-loving world
paid his genius all the tribute that men can offer to the worth of other
men.

And now the passing years have brought a confirmation in belief of the
statement made by Franz Liszt, "Richard Wagner is the one true musical
genius of his age."

Wagner's admirers should, for him, plead guilty to the worst that can be
said: he is everything that his most bitter critics say, but he is so
much more that his faults and follies sink into ashes before the divine
fire of his genius, and we still have the gold. Inconsistent,
paradoxical, preposterous--why, yes, of course! Still he is the greatest
poet of passion the world has ever seen--don't cavil--passion's
consistency consists in being inconsistent.

"Every sentence must have a man behind it," and so we might say, "Every
bar of music must have a man behind it." That harmony only can live
which once had its dwelling-place in a great and tender heart.

The province of art is to impart a sublime emotion, and that which
affects to be an emotion, no matter how subtly launched, can never live
as classic art. Honesty here, as elsewhere, must have its reward. Be
yourself, though all the world laugh.

I will not say that Wagner was--he is. The man himself in life was often
worn to the quick by the deprivations he had to endure, or the stupid
misunderstandings he encountered, so at times he was impatient,
erratic, possibly perverse. But all that is gone--his mistakes have
been washed in the blood of Time--only the good survives. The best that
this great and godlike man ever thought, or felt, or knew, is ours--he
lives immortal in his Art.

[Illustration: PAGANINI]

PAGANINI

For lo! creation's self is one great choir,
And what is Nature's order but the rhyme
Whereto the worlds keep time,
And all things move with all things from their prime?
Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre?
In far retreats of elemental mind
Obscurely comes and goes
The imperative breath of song, that as the wind
Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.

--_William Watson_