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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



portion of it — a hamlet, a sloping patch of vine- 

 yard, and a pine-copse beyond : but as you as- 

 cend the winding path the prospect opens to 

 right and left ; cascades leap by to lose them- 

 selves in the torrent below — you plunge into the 

 gloom of a forest and emerge on to the higher 

 meadows and pleasant scenes of pastoral life — 

 yonder the soil grows rocky, and tumbled bowl- 

 ders lie around you — the cloud lifts, and a vista 

 of mountains and valleys is suddenly opened up, 

 and pressing forward you leave far below the 

 murmurs of one world, and raise your enraptured 

 eyes to the black eagle, as he wheels aloft in the 

 golden air beyond the stainless and eternal snows. 

 So when we are brought face to face with such 

 a varied, complex, and immense intelligence as 

 that of Richard Wagner, we are apt to dwell on a 

 part — a peculiarity of the music — a turn of the 

 drama — a melody, a situation, an eccentricity. 

 But the secret lies, after all, in the unity of effect. 

 Close your eyes after a day in the Alps, and, as 

 the visions pass before you, all will grow clear 

 to your inner consciousness, and the varied 

 scenes you have realized only in succession will 

 at last arrange themselves into one great and 



majestic whole. 



II. 



" Perhaps he has some talent for music," 

 said the sick man as he heard little Richard, then 

 only seven years old, strumming a tune from 

 " Der Freischutz " on the piano. It was Louis 

 Geyer, his step-father, painter, author, and actor, 

 now on his death-bed, thinking of the future, 

 planning as dying men plan, and hitting the mark 

 as they often hit it, quite at random. The child's 

 vivid temperament and eager, sensitive mind had 

 always made him a favorite with the actor and 

 the poet, and he thought of making a painter of 

 Richard, but the boy seemed to have no turn for 

 it. His mother, a woman full of life and imagi- 

 nation, was less anxious and more wise. She let 

 him grow, and happily he was left to her, "with 

 no education," as he says, " but life, art, and my- 

 self." 



Indeed, any attempt to hasten Wagner's de- 

 velopment, or to fix his career, would doubtless 

 have failed. From the first, the consciousness 

 of his own force has been one of his strangest 

 and strongest peculiarities. At times it seems to 

 have almost intoxicated him — at others it sus- 

 tained and cheered him in utter loneliness ; it has 

 dominated all who have come in personal contact 

 with him, and bent the minds and wills of the re- 

 bellious like reeds before the wind. 



And the reason is evident Wagner was al- 



ways prodigious in his ability. Like those very 

 fast trotters that flash along the highways of Eng- 

 land and America, he has been in the habit of 

 passing every one on the road, and passing them 

 easily. But the consciousness of power bred in 

 him a singular willfulness. At school he could 

 learn anything, but he would learn only as he chose 

 and what he chose. When his time came he 

 mastered, with incredible rapidity and accuracy, 

 Greek, Latin, mythology, and ancient history. 

 As for his music-master, he soon sent him to the 

 right about, telling him he would learn music his 

 own way. Indeed, the variety of influences, and 

 the rapidity with which he absorbed them, one 

 after the other, quite unfitted him for going into 

 harness early in any one direction. 



At the age of seventeen he had dipped into 

 most literatures, ancient and modern — glanced at 

 science, learned English in order to read Shake- 

 speare, weighed several schools of philosophy, 

 studied and dismissed the contending theologies, 

 absorbed Schiller and worshiped Goethe (then 

 eighty-four years old), turned away from the con- 

 ventional stage of Kotzebue and Ifnand, tasted 

 politics, and been deeply stirred by the music of 

 Beethoven. 



There was doubtless a great indistinctness 

 about his aims at this time. To live, to grow, to 

 feel, to be filled with new emotions, and to sound 

 his enormous capacities for receiving impressions 

 and acquiring facts — this had hitherto been 

 enough ; but the vexed question was inevitable : 

 to what end ? 



The artistic temperament could give but one 

 answer to that — " Expression ! " Creation itself 

 — man — the world, the universe — is nothing but 

 that. There is ever this imperious divine neces- 

 sity for outward expression. This is the lesson 

 of the ages and of the universe — of which we see 

 but a little speck realized upon our tiny and over- 

 crowded planet. But this burning thought turns 

 the mind of man itself into a divine microcosm — 

 he, too, begins to obey in his higher activities 

 what he perceives to be the supreme law of the 

 divine life. He, too, must flash into self-conscious- 

 ness, and breathe in form, until all that slept 

 in the silence of his heart comes forth swift and 

 radiant with the wind and fire of emotion, and 

 stands at last like an angel, full of wreathed mel- 

 odies and crowned with stars. 



Such to the artist-soul is the beloved parable 



of earth. The life within must become outward ; 



all that we are is dying to be born, is craving to 



realize itself, to know, to possess, to adore ! Is 



' man social ? His being passes by an organic law 



