chestra begins to play his music, all the instruments
are transfigured. They seem to utter the sounds that they have been
longing to utter. The horns run riot; the drums and cymbals join in the
general joy; the old bass viols are alive with passion; the 'cellos
throb with love; the violins are seized with a divine fury, and the
notes rush out as eager for the air as pardoned prisoners for the roads
and fields.

The music of Wagner is filled with landscapes. There are some strains,
like midnight, thick with constellations, and there are harmonies like
islands in the far seas, and others like palms on the desert's edge. His
music satisfies the heart and brain. It is not only for memory; not only
for the present, but for prophecy.

Wagner was a sculptor, a painter in sound. When he died, the greatest
fountain of melody that ever enchanted the world, ceased. His music will
instruct and refine forever.

All that I know about the operas of Wagner I have learned from Anton
Seidl. I believe that he is the noblest, tenderest and most artistic
interpreter of the great composer that has ever lived.

SIR HENRY IRVING

LOOKING FORWARD

[Speech of Henry Irving[10] at a banquet given in his honor, London,
July 4, 1883, in view of his impending departure for a professional
tour of America. The Lord Chief Justice of England, John Duke
Coleridge, occupied the chair.]

[Illustration: _MENU CARD Photogravure after a design by Thompson
Willing_

Through the courtesy of the Lotus Club, we are enabled to reproduce
this typical dinner card, especially drawn and engraved for a
complimentary banquet to Sir Henry Irving. The original card is
about three times the size of this reproduction.

DINNER TO

SIR HENRY IRVING

GIVEN BY THE

LOTOS CLUB

SATURDAY OCT 28

MDCCCXCIX]

MY LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--I cannot
conceive a greater honor entering into the life of any man than the
honor you have paid me by assembling here to-night. To look around this
room and scan the faces of my distinguished hosts, would stir to its
depths a colder nature than mine. It is not in my power, my lords and
gentlemen, to thank you for the compliment you have to-night paid me.

"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel."

Never before have I so strongly felt the magic of those words; but you
will remember