must be crushed. And this is the theme of every real tragedy. Othello,
Lear, Njal, Grettir, Clarissa Harlowe, the Maid of Orleans, Antigone,
Prometheus, and, as I hope to show, Tristan and Isolde, these are but
a few among those who must perish from no fault in themselves, but
because they are too noble for their surroundings.

"The greater the man, the greater his love." We should not set the
genius on a pedestal to be first gaped at and then ridiculed. He needs
before all else our love and our sympathy; for his nature is
essentially that of a child, and, childlike, he craves for human love
as the first necessity of his life. To those who set up an idol of
their own fancy and worship that as his image, he will be cold and
repellent, but to those who know him as he really is he will return
their love with all the warmth and purity of his childlike nature. Two
things are intolerable to a healthy-minded child--rough brutality and
mawkish caressing; Wagner was fated to endure a full share of both. It
is touching to read of Wagner's simple affection for those who were
around him in humble capacities. Every one who has read his life knows
of his kindliness to his domestic servants. Now it is the village
barber who is "gar zu theuer," now his gondola-man in Venice. His love
for animals has been perhaps too much dwelt upon by his biographers,
but it is very characteristic.

Mankind is not divided into Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites; nor is it
divided into Romanists and Protestants, nor into theologians and
rationalists, nor into Tories and Radicals, nor into any other of our
familiar party divisions. The true division is into great men and
small, lovers of truth and sophists, honest men and thieves. Thieves
and sophists wrangle, but the great and true "join hands through the
centuries," and between them is eternal peace.