y passage with a full
consciousness of all that is to come after, as well as of what has
gone before. Wagner himself was compact of contradictions, and so,
while trying to create his operas in such fashion that a single
performance would suffice to reveal their splendour, he took the
precaution to write detailed explanations which might serve the same
purpose as many previous performances; and he also wrote explanations
of Beethoven's symphonies.

Throughout this long scene the tender stream of melody flows on, never
lapsing into anything approaching prettiness or feebleness, flooding
us with an overwhelming sense of a far-away past, while full utterance
is found for Eva's anxiety, then her despair, and her wish, timidly
spoken, to give herself to Sachs rather than to be won by Beckmesser.
A scene of such length, constructed on such a plan, could have been
carried through by no other composer than Wagner--the sweetness,
variety and dramatic strength and truth are Wagner at his ripest and
best. After Eva's heart has been opened to us he takes up (_d_), and
though Sachs is a little grumpy--the effort to resign Eva inevitably
though insensibly showing itself--we learn all about him and share
his secret, too, in a very short while. Then Magdalena calls Eva and
tells her Beckmesser intends to serenade her, and goes in to take her
place at the window; and then comes the only love-duet in the opera.
Walther appears; and Eva chants a melody that is surely first cousin
to one of the greatest in _Euryanthe_. As we get on we find it harder
to give any adequate idea of the enchantment of the thing. The gentle
evening wind makes its voice heard, low, soft; and Walther, scorning
the masters who compose and sing only by rule--and, by the way, what
would Wagner have done in the days when a musician had to play and
sing before he could be understood or ever heard as a composer?--works
himself up to a state of tumultuous indignation; then a strange noise
is heard in the distance, the watchman's cow-horn. A minute's silence,
and next one of the sweetest melodies in all music--expressive of the
love of Walther and Eva, but also full of that feeling for the remote
past; then the entrance of the watchman, with his warning to the folk
to look after their lights and fires: it is ten o'clock (late hours)
in our city, and disaster must be kept off at all costs. Sachs has
heard the talk between Eva and Walther and determined to ward off
disaster