men on whose work Wagner was fed and brought up had their roots in a
past that is now dead and buried. Had he been born a few years earlier
he might have worn a wig; the stock was not to depart for many a year to
come. A man might still, without causing remark, wear coats, waistcoats
and trousers of many hues. The old world was going fast, but it had not
gone. The fires of the French Revolution had cast strange lights amongst
the peoples and struck a deadly chill into the hearts of kings and
governors. Napoleon had shown what the will, brain and energy of a man
could do, and all the forces of reaction were gathering together to
crush him at Waterloo; the heads of men were seething with new ideas,
destined to bring about the strangest results a few years afterwards;
but the old order still prevailed, had not yet yielded to the new. Let
us remember how short a time had passed since Haydn retired, after a
life spent at a pig-tail German Court in the service of a princeling
whose position was about as lofty as that of an English country squire,
though it must be admitted that his tastes were a little more elevated.
Railways had not defiled the landscapes of Europe, nor gas robbed her
cities of all romance by night. The watchman blew his horn and called
the hour, and told all those abed that it rained or snowed. Most of the
blessings of civilization, which were to do so much for humanity and
have done so little, had yet to come. Fair fields and forests, fresh,
unpolluted rivers, cities of great-gabled houses, old-world narrow
streets and beautiful gardens, and, excepting in England, few noisy
smoking factories and foul chemical works--this was the Europe into
which Richard Wagner was born on May 22, 1813.

He was born in Leipzig. His father, a police official of some vague
sort, died when he was a few months old, and his mother went to Dresden
and married Ludwig Geyer, an actor. Richard, however, had no great luck
in the matter of fathers, for six years later Geyer also died. Dresden