in Wagner's footsteps.

Such, briefly told, is the story of Richard Wagner and Modern Music. The
"music of the future" has become the music of the present. What the
future will bring no one can tell. Croakers say, as they have always
said, that the race of giants has died out. But who knew, fifty years
ago, that Wagner and Liszt, or even their predecessors, Chopin and
Schumann, and the song specialist, Robert Franz, were giants? We know it
now, and future generations will know whether we have giants among us.
Things of beauty that will be a joy forever have been created by men of
genius now living in Europe; such men as the Norwegian Grieg, the
Bohemian Dvorák, the French Saint-Saëns and Massenet, the Hungarian
Goldmark, the German Humperdinck and Richard Strauss, the Polish
Paderewski. England has more good composers and listeners than it ever
had before; and the same is true of America. We have no school of opera
yet, but the best operettas of Victor Herbert and De Koven deserve
mention by the side of those of the French. Offenbach, Lecocq, and
Audran, the Viennese Strauss, Suppé, and Milloecker, the English
Sullivan. The orchestral compositions of our John K. Paine are
masterworks, and the songs and pianoforte pieces of MacDowell are equal
to anything produced in Europe since Chopin and Franz. We have several
other men of great promise, and altogether the outlook for America, as
well as for Europe, is bright.

AUTHORITIES.

The books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles on Wagner would fill a
library. He has been more written about than any writers except
Shakspere, Goethe, and Dante. He was also fond of writing about himself.
His autobiography (extending only to 1865) has not yet been given to the