ch would
tax the utmost powers of the modern stage-machinist who might attempt
to carry them out. A mimic tower of Babel is more preposterous than a
mimic temple of Dagon; yet, unless Rubinstein's stage directions are to
be taken in a Pickwickian sense, we ought to listen to this music while
looking at a stage-setting more colossal than any ever contemplated by
dramatist before. We should see a wide stretch of the plain of Shinar;
in the foreground a tower so tall as to give color of plausibility to a
speech which prates of an early piercing of heaven and so large as to
provide room for a sleeping multitude on its scaffoldings. Brick kilns,
derricks, and all the apparatus and machinery of building should be on
all hands, and from the summit of a mound should grow a giant tree,
against whose trunk should hang a brazen shield to be used as a signal
gong. We should see in the progress of the opera the bustling activity
of the workmen, the roaring flames and rolling smoke of the brick
kilns, and witness the miraculous spectacle of a man thrown into the
fire and walking thence unharmed. We should see (in dissolving views)
the dispersion of the races and behold the unfolding of a rainbow in
the sky. And, finally, we should get a glimpse of an open heaven and
the Almighty on His throne, and a yawning hell, with Satan and his
angels exercising their dread dominion. Can such scenes be mimicked
successfully enough to preserve a serious frame of mind in the
observer? Hardly. Yet the music seems obviously to have been written in
the expectation that sight shall aid hearing to quicken the fancy and
emotion and excite the faculties to an appreciation of the work.

"The Tower of Babel" has been performed upon the stage; how I cannot
even guess. Knowing, probably, that the work would be given in concert
form oftener than in dramatic, Rubinstein tries to stimulate the fancy
of those who must be only listeners by profuse stage directions which
are printed in the score as well as the book of words. "Moses" is in
the same case. By the time that Rubinstein had completed it he
evidently realized that its hybrid character as well as its stupendous
scope would stand in the way of performances of any kind. Before even a
portion of its music had been heard in public, he wrote in a letter to
a friend: "It is too theatrical for the concert-room and too much like
an oratorio for the theatre. It is, in fact, the perfect type of the
sacred opera that