or ideals; their minds were dull and heavy, and yet here they responded
to the divine spirit of the music. There is no more impressive sight
than that of thousands of people held spellbound by a melody; it is by
turns sublime, grotesque, and touching.

What a place in my life those Sunday concerts held! All the week I lived
for those two hours; and when they were over I thought about them until
the following Sunday. The fascination of Wagner's music for youth has
often troubled people; they think it poisons the thoughts and dulls the
activities. But the generation that was then intoxicated by Wagner does
not seem to have shown signs of demoralisation since. Why do not people
understand that if we had need of that music it was not because it was
death to us, but life. Cramped by the artificiality of a town, far from
action, or nature, or any strong or real life, we expanded under the
influence of this noble music--music which flowed from a heart filled
with understanding of the world and the breath of Nature. In _Die
Meistersinger_, in _Tristan_, and in _Siegfried_, we went to find the
joy, the love, and the vigour that we so lacked.

At the time when I was feeling Wagner's seductiveness so strongly there
were always some carping people among my elders ready to quench my
admiration and say with a superior smile: "That is nothing. One can't
judge Wagner at a concert. You must hear him in the opera-house at
Bayreuth." Since then I have been several times to Bayreuth; I have seen
Wagner's works performed in Berlin, in Dresden, in Munich, and in other
German towns, but I have never again felt the old intoxication. People
are wrong to pretend that closer acquaintance with a fine work adds to
one's enjoyment of it. It may throw light upon it, but it nips one's
imagination and dispels the mystery. The puzzling fragments one hears at
concerts will take on splendid proportions on account of all the mind