ke his young existence
comfortable and happy. He got a much better education than in that
epoch fell to the lot of the average student belonging to a family of
such straitened means; when he wanted lessons in music he got them,
and if the family did not pay for them I don't know who did. He was
fed, clothed and apparently provided with pocket-money to hold his own
with his fellow-students until at the age of twenty he began to earn a
little money for himself; and it was Albert who gave him his first
appointment. Long after then he drained their resources and the
resources of the families into which his sisters had married. Wagner,
as I have observed, was a spoiled boy and was made utterly selfish;
and as years went on and he came to think music the salvation of
Germany, and himself the salvation of music, by a simple logical
process he arrived at a conclusion which justified his
selfishness--namely, that it was every one's duty to support him, for
to support him was only to help art and the fatherland. It is all very
charming, and it makes one rather glad not to be a German. Without
Wagner's colossal egotism he never could have got through the
difficulties he had to face, and his selfishness is the defect of his
quality; but it is pitiable to find writers--Glasenapp, Ashton Ellis,
Chamberlain and Wolzogen--sunk so low in abject flunkeyism as to
glorify the defect as the quality.

In 1829 a court theatre, as has been said, was opened. Rosalie came as
a leading lady, and one Heinrich Dorn came as musical director. Dorn
was nine years older than Richard at a time of life when nine years
make an immense difference; but the elder, certainly through the
influence of Rosalie, from the beginning took a keen interest in the
younger. He played Richard's music at the theatre--to his own
confusion on at least one occasion. Richard had composed an overture
in six-eight time with a fearful stroke of the drum, a _Paukenschlag_,
every fourth or fifth bar; Dorn played it; the audience grew mirthful.
That is all. What the motive was for the drum-strokes I cannot guess.
Still, Dorn did not give him up, and performed other and, let us
hope, less ludicrous efforts. Presently I shall devote a page or two
to the compositions prior to his first professional engagement; but
first let me set down a few of the needful facts of his outer life.

The Paris revolution of 1830 set all youthful Europe in a ferment. The
students of Leipzig university