inclination of her heart, and leave master-singing out of the game!"
remarks Beckmesser tartly. "Not at all! Not at all!" Pogner strives
to calm them, "Not in the very least! You have imperfectly understood.
The maiden may refuse the one to whom you master-singers award the
prize, but she may not choose another. A master-singer he must
be. Only one crowned by yourselves may become a suitor for her."
The arrangement does seem, closely considered, rather hard on the
young lady, and one fancies more than once, in the course of the
play, a shade of sheepishness in the father's own attitude toward
it,--momentary ripples of misgiving.

A voice of beautiful, calm, corrective sanity is now raised in
the assembly. "Your pardon!" speaks Sachs to Pogner, "you have
perhaps already gone somewhat far. The heart of a young girl and
the heart aglow for master-art do not always burn with an identical
flame. Feminine judgment, untutored as it is, would seem to me
on a level with popular judgment. If therefore you have in mind
to show the people how highly you honour art, and if, leaving to
your daughter the right of choice, you wish her not to repudiate
the verdict, let the people be among the judges, for the people's
taste is sure to coincide with the girl's."

Indignation upon this among the masters. "The people?... That were
fine! As well say good-bye, once for all, to art!... Sachs, what
you say is nonsense.... Are the rules of art to be set aside for
the people?"--"Understand me aright!" Sachs meets them; "How you
take on! You will own that I know the rules thoroughly. For many a
year I have been at pains to keep the guild to a strict observation
of them. But once a year it would seem to me wise to test the rules
themselves, and see whether in the easy grooves of habit their
strength and vitality have not been lost. And whether you are still
upon the right track of nature you can only find out from such
as know nothing of tabulated rules!" (The apprentices, who here
represent the people, and have no great love for the _Tabulatur_,
give evidence of joy.) "Wherefore it would seem to me expedient that
yearly, at Saint John's feast, instead of permitting the people to
come to you, you should descend out of your lofty mastership-cloud,
and yourselves go to the people. You wish to please the people. It
would strike me as to the point to let the people tell you itself
whether you succeed in pleasing it. You would thus secure a vital
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