rom SUPER-GERMAN
sources and impulses: in which connection it may not be underrated
how indispensable Paris was to the development of his type, which the
strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most
decisive time--and how the whole style of his proceedings, of his
self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in sight of the French
socialistic original. On a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be
found, to the honour of Richard Wagner's German nature, that he has
acted in everything with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation
than a nineteenth-century Frenchman could have done--owing to the
circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the
French;--perhaps even the most remarkable creation of Richard Wagner is
not only at present, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and
inimitable to the whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Siegfried,
that VERY FREE man, who is probably far too free, too hard, too
cheerful, too healthy, too ANTI-CATHOLIC for the taste of old and mellow
civilized nations. He may even have been a sin against Romanticism, this
anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old
sad days, when--anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into
politics--he began, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to
preach, at least, THE WAY TO ROME, if not to walk therein.--That
these last words may not be misunderstood, I will call to my aid a few
powerful rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what I
mean--what I mean COUNTER TO the "last Wagner" and his Parsifal music:--

--Is this our mode?--From German heart came this vexed ululating? From
German body, this self-lacerating? Is ours this priestly hand-dilation,
This incense-fuming exaltation? Is ours this faltering, falling,
shambling, This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling? This sly
nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly false enraptured
heaven-o'erspringing?--Is this our mode?--Think well!--ye still wait for
admission--For what ye hear is ROME--ROME'S FAITH BY INTUITION!

CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE?

257. EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an
aristocratic society and so it will always be--a society believing in
a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human
beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the PATHOS
OF DISTANCE, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of cl