series of failures, yet whose music will not down. His art was centred
less upon the old essentials, of characteristic melody and soul-stirring
harmonies, than upon the magic strokes of new instrumental grouping,--a
graphic rather than a pure musical purpose. And so he is the father not
only of the modern orchestra, but of the fashion of the day that revels
in new sensations of startling effects, that are spent in portraying the
events of a story.

Berlioz was the first of a line of _virtuosi_ of the orchestra, a
pioneer in the art of weaving significant strains,--significant, that
is, apart from the music. He was seized with the passion of making a
pictured design with his orchestral colors. Music, it seems, did not
exist for Berlioz except for the telling of a story. His symphony is
often rather opera. A symphony, he forgot, is not a musical drama
without the scenery. This is just what is not a symphony. It is not the
literal story, but the pure musical utterance. Thus Berlioz's "Romeo and
Juliet" symphony is in its design more the literal story than is
Shakespeare's play. And yet there is ever a serious nobility, a heroic
reach in the art of Berlioz, where he stands almost alone among the
composers of his race. Here, probably, more than in his pictured
stories, lies the secret of his endurance. He was, other than his
followers, ever an idealist. And so, when we are on the point of
condemning him as a scene-painter, we suddenly come upon a stretch of
pure musical beauty, that flowed from the unconscious rapture of true
poet. As the bee sucks, so may we cull the stray beauty and the more
intimate meaning, despite and aside from this outer intent.