the enchanting one, she comes. What delirious impatience, what joyous transports!

"Intoxication of the soul, rapture without measure, impetuous and overheated, blood, how shall I support you chained to this couch? Up then, up, on the march toward the beating heart!" Already Isolde's voice is heard, and the hero throws himself, staggering, from his bed. She comes, she calls him, holds her arms toward him; but he can only die at her feet, uttering for the last time the infinitely-beloved name. "Ah, live with me yet one hour, only an hour," cries the distracted Isolde in her despair. "I have only lived through so many days of anguish and desire to watch one hour with thee. Do not die of thy wound, let me heal thee, that safe and strong we may share the sainted delights of night." The flame is extinguished, the soul has fled. Isolde, always faithful, will follow Tristan in death. Already the loved one draws her toward the mysterious land; mighty waves seem to overpower her. Her ears resound with murmurs of the infinite. Night, consoling night, gently envelops her, overwhelms her. She is drowned, lost, to unite herself forever to the twin flame, and loses herself in the divine breath of the universal soul. It is almost impossible to imagine the intensity of expression which this poem, so passionate, so intense in itself, acquires united to the magic of music. It is like the vital energy of the soul, a supernatural rapture. The intoxication and the acute torments experienced in hearing this work are ineffaceable. All who have entered into its transcendent beauties, and undergone its terrible charm in all its power, recognize that no other artistic impression is comparable to that which makes itself felt in this extraordinary work. Many volumes in all languages have been written upon Tristan and Isolde; many will still be written, for it is the magnificent prerogative of a great masterpiece to be the perpetual inspiration of noble minds.

THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBURG.

The scene of this piece is laid in the sixteenth century, at that singular epoch when art and poetry, disdained by the nobility, had taken refuge among the citizens and trades-people. Since the disappearance of the Minnesingers, those minstrels of love so closely resembling the French troubadours, the Mastersingers alone taught poetry and music. These masters were also chiefs of corporations, and their scholars, at the same time their apprentices, learned to stitch a sole and hold a note, to scan a verse and cut a pair of breeches. It is easy to imagine in what degree art must have languished in such a state, how the many rules and laws of these narrow-minded men must have trammelled the flight of inspiration, which must of necessity fold its wings and walk in trodden paths. It was like a bird brought up by a mole. If by chance a new-comer, possessing no science save his own genius, ventured into the circle of poet-mechanics, it is easy to imagine what a concert of imprecations assailed the freedom with which he broke the laws, minutely woven by routine, as if they had been spiders' webs. It is an event of this nature which Richard Wagner has chosen to form the plot of his comedy.