I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard
Wagner’s overture to the Mastersinger: it is a piece of mag-
nificent, gorgeous, heavy, latter-day art, which has the pride
to presuppose two centuries of music as still living, in order
that it may be understood:—it is an honour to Germans that
such a pride did not miscalculate! What flavours and forces,
what seasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! It im-
presses us at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign,
bitter, and too modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously
traditional, it is not infrequently roguish, still oftener rough
and coarse—it has fire and courage, and at the same time
the loose, dun- coloured skin of fruits which ripen too late.
It flows broad and full: and suddenly there is a moment of
inexplicable hesitation, like a gap that opens between cause
and effect, an oppression that makes us dream, almost a
nightmare; but already it broadens and widens anew, the
old stream of delight-the most manifold delight,—of old
and new happiness; including ESPECIALLY the joy of the
artist in himself, which he refuses to conceal, his aston-
ished, happy cognizance of his mastery of the expedients
here employed, the new, newly acquired, imperfectly tested
expedients of art which he apparently betrays to us. All in
