fight against, their own countrymen. Whether he actually shouldered a
musket or not it is hard to say. This much is certain, however: that
Wagner did take part in the rising, and that a warrant was issued for
his arrest. The fiasco resulted in a great gain to music, and, as far as
Wagner was concerned, there was no political loss. Had the insurgents by
some unthinkable chance succeeded, he would soon have been on worse
terms with them than ever he was with Kings and Imperial personages.
They tried revolt because they wished to alter all the conditions under
which men lived. Wagner, too, wanted to alter the conditions of life,
but mainly with a view of carrying out his operatic reforms. Look where
we will in his writings, we see that to be the secret of all his
incursions into practical politics. Passionate--a bursting volcano of
elemental energy--he was always a man of one idea at a time, and that
idea always involved Richard Wagner playing an important role, for he
was one of the most splendid egoists to be met in history.

ZURICH--PARIS (1849-1861).

He was now, indeed, in a pretty pickle. At Dresden he had an assured
livelihood and time to write operas; and, despite his former experience
of hunger and want, he threw away his position for the sake of an idea.
He afterwards was wont to complain that he only wished to be kept alive
in reasonable comfort, and he would in return present the world with
masterpieces. Yet he was not content when he was, for a comparatively
slight return in daily labour, kept comfortably alive. But, after all,
what appears at first to have been an act of madness turned out anything
but disastrous in the long-run. It is true that without the generous
help of Liszt, Wesendonek and others he could not have lived as he did
in Zurich, and, as it was, constant apprehensions of approaching
poverty harassed him. The old fear of an empty belly which got into his
very blood and bones in the Riga--Paris period now began to show itself
in those appealing letters written to his friends when there appears to
have been no necessity whatever. He had exaggerated hopes and
exaggerated fears. The hopes were realized--as well as anything can be
realized in this imperfect world--at Bayreuth; the fears found
expression in the begging letters of which advantage was taken by every
mean and cowardly spirit without the intelligence to understand his real
greatness. Mendelssohn, we are reminded, wrote no such l