iens into its yoke, but, as in the case of Heine and
Mendelssohn, often produces in them profoundly affecting tones of
longing for participation in its sublime nature. Wagner's feeling at
this, the most confused uproar which has been heard in the present
time, could only have been like that of Goethe, namely, that all these
stupid talkers have no idea how impregnable the fortress is in which
he lives who is ever earnest about himself and his cause. He was
unconcerned, knowing that he should have the privilege of performing
his "Ring of the Nibelungen" far from all these distorted forms and
figures of the prevailing art. Of this, his noble friend had given
positive assurance; and for himself it became an unavoidable
necessity, since in 1869 and 1870 Munich had performed, without his
consent and contrary to his wishes, "Rheingold" and "Walkuere," by
which it had only been shown anew how little the prevalent opera
routine was in consonance with his object.

In the meantime came the war of 1870. That of 1866 had destroyed the
rotten German "Bund," but now the most daring hopes revived in German
breasts, for there stood the people in arms, like Lohengrin,
everywhere repelling injustice and violence.

I dared to bury many a smart
Which long and deeply grieved my heart.

With these words Wagner greeted his king on the latter's birth day in
1870, and with clear-sighted boldness he said to himself, "The morning
of mankind is dawning." The work, however, which was to glorify and
render effective this first full Siegfried-deed of the Germans since
the days of the Reformation, and revive the moral energy of the
nation, was completed in June of the same year, 1870, with the
"Goetterdaemmerung."

He now strove to strengthen himself anew and permanently. For the
first time in his life he fully secured the purely human happiness
which preserves our powers. He married the divorced Frau Cosima von
Buelow, a daughter of Liszt. "This man, so completely controlled
by his demon, should always have had at his side a high-minded,
appreciative woman, a wife that would have understood the war that was
constantly waged within him," is the judgment passed on Wagner's first
wife by one of her friends. He had now found this woman, and in a way
that proved on every hand a blessing. Her incomparably unselfish,
self-sacrificing first husband himself declared afterwards that this
was the only proper solution. Siegfried was the name given