lock of spotless
marble seen against a background of black, with just such a fair
figure recumbent upon it, whose palms and lids and draping the chisel
of an artist seemed to have folded and closed and hung,--all idealised
again by the magic of the magnesium-light. As the crimson curtain was
drawn apart, an organ sounded, and a far-away choir sent into the hush
the _Ave Verum_ of Mozart, low-breathed and solemn.

It was not Munich, Fastidiosus. They were American young men and young
women, with no resources but those of a rural college, and such as
their own taste and the woods and gardens could furnish; but the young
men were shapely and intelligent, and the young women had grace and
brightness; their hearts were in it, and in the result surely there
was a measure of "sweetness and light" for them and those who beheld.

You fear it may beget in young minds a taste for the theatre, now
hopelessly given over in great part to abominations. Why not a
taste that will lift them above the abominations? Old Joachim Greff,
schoolmaster at Dessau in 1545, who has a place in the history of
German poetry, has left it on record that he trained his scholars to
render noble dramas in the conscientious hope "that a little spark of
art might be kept alive in the schools under the ashes of barbarism."
"And this little spark," says Gervinus, "did these bold men, indeed,
through two hundred years, keep honestly until it could again break
out into flame." Instead of fearing the evil result, rather would I
welcome a revival of what Warton calls "this very liberal exercise."
Were Joachim Greffs masters in our high schools and in the English
chairs in our colleges, we might now and then catch a glimpse of
precious things at present hidden away in never-opened store-houses,
and see something done toward the development of a taste that should
drive out the _opera-bouffe_.

Here, at the end, Fastidiosus, is what I now shape in mind. Hippolyte
Taine, in one of his rich descriptions, thus pictures the performance
of a masque:

The _elite_ of the kingdom is there upon the stage,
the ladies of the court, the great lords, the queen,
in all the splendour of their rank and their pride, in
diamonds, earnest to display their luxury so that all
the brilliant features of the nation's life are concentrated
in the price they give, like gems in a casket.
What adornment! What profusion of magnificence!
What variety! What metamorphoses! Go