is singularly picturesque and striking as a musical
conception, and is a fitting companion to the tragic prison scene.
The despair of the poor crazed _Marguerite_; her delirious joy in
recognizing _Faust_; the temptation to fly; the final outburst of faith
and hope, as the sense of Divine pardon sinks into her soul--all these
are touched with the fire of genius, and the passion sweeps with an
unfaltering force to its climax. These references to the details of a
work so familiar as "Faust," conveying of course no fresh information to
the reader, have been made to illustrate the peculiarities of Gounod's
musical temperament, which sways in such fascinating contrast between
the voluptuous and the spiritual. But whether his accents belong to
the one or the other, they bespeak a mood flushed with earnestness and
fervor, and a mind which recoils from the frivolous, however graceful it
may be.

In the Franco-German school, of which Gounod is so high an exponent, the
orchestra is busy throughout developing the history of the emotions, and
in "Faust" especially it is as busy a factor in expressing the passions
of the characters as the vocal parts. Not even in the "garden scene"
does the singing reduce the instruments to a secondary importance. The
difference between Gounod and Wagner, who professes to elaborate the
importance of the orchestra in dramatic music, is that the former has a
skill in writing for the voice which the other lacks. The one lifts the
voice by the orchestration, the other submerges it. Gounod's affluence
of lovely melody can only be compared with that of Mozart and Rossini,
and his skill and ingenuity in treating the orchestra have wrung
reluctant praise from his bitterest opponents.

The special power which makes Gounod unique in his art, aside from those
elements before alluded to as derived from temperament, is his unerring
sense of dramatic fitness, which weds such highly suggestive music
to each varying phase of character and action. To this perhaps one
exception may be made. While he possesses a certain airy playfulness,
he fails in rich broad humor utterly, and situations of comedy are by no
means so well handled as the more serious scenes.

A good illustration of this may be found in "Le Medecin malgre lui,"
in the couplets given to the drunken _Sganarelle_. They are beautiful
music, but utterly unflavored with the _vis comica_.

Had Gounod written only "Faust," it should stamp him as one of the