were all that need be taken into
account, the matter could easily be decided. No composer ever dealt more
freely in the supernatural than Spohr. His operas are peopled with
elves, ghosts, and goblins. Ruined castles, midnight assassins, and
distressed damsels greet us on every page. But if we go somewhat deeper,
we find that the real qualities of romanticism are strangely absent from
his music. His form differs little from that of his classical
predecessors, and his orchestration is curiously arid and unsuggestive;
in a word, the breath of imagination rarely animates his pages. Yet the
workmanship of his operas is so admirable, and his vein of melody is so
delicate and refined, that it is difficult to help thinking that Spohr
has been unjustly neglected. His 'Faust,' which has nothing to do with
Goethe's drama, was popular in England fifty years ago; and 'Jessonda,'
which contains the best of his music, is still occasionally performed in
Germany. The rest of his works, with the exception of a few scattered
airs, such as 'Rose softly blooming,' from 'Zemire und Azor,' seem to be
completely forgotten.

Heinrich Marschner (1796-1861), though not a pupil of Weber, was
strongly influenced by his music, and carried on the traditions of the
romantic school worthily and well. He was a man of vivid imagination,
and revelled in uncanny legends of the supernatural. His works are
performed with tolerable frequency in Germany, and still please by
reason of their inexhaustible flow of melody and their brilliant and
elaborate orchestration. 'Hans Heiling,' his masterpiece, is founded
upon a sombre old legend of the Erzgebirge. The king of the gnomes has
seen and loved a Saxon maiden, Anna by name, and to win her heart he
leaves his palace in the bowels of the earth and masquerades as a
village schoolmaster under the name of Hans Heiling. Anna is flattered
by his attentions, and promises to be his wife; but she soon tires of
her gloomy lover, and ends by openly admitting her preference for the
hunter Conrad. Her resolution to break with Hans is confirmed by an
apparition of the queen of the gnomes, Hans Heiling's mother, surrounded
by her attendant sprites, who warns her under fearful penalties to
forswear the love of an immortal. Hans Heiling is furious at the perfidy
of Anna, and vows terrible vengeance upon her and Conrad, which he is
about to put into execution with the aid of his gnomes. At the last
moment, however, his mother app