ries, and Valhalla is to know her no more. Thrown into a deep
sleep, she shall lie upon the mountain-top, to be the bride of the first
man who finds and wakens her. Bruennhilde pleads passionately for a
mitigation of the cruel sentence, or at least that a circle of fire
shall be drawn around her resting-place, so that none but a hero of
valour and determination can hope to win her. Moved by her entreaties,
Wotan consents. He kisses her fondly to sleep, and lays her gently upon
a mossy couch, covered with her shield. Then he strikes the earth with
his spear, calling on the fire-god Loge. Tongues of fire spring up
around them, and leaving her encircled with a rampart of flame, he
passes from the mountain-top with the words, 'Let him who fears my
spear-point never dare to pass through the fire.'

With 'Die Walkuere' the human interest of 'Der Ring des Nibelungen'
begins, and with it Wagner rises to greater heights than he could hope
to reach in 'Das Rheingold.' In picturesque force and variety 'Die
Walkuere' does not yield to its predecessors, while the passion and
beauty of the immortal tale of the Volsungs lifts it dramatically into a
different world. 'Die Walkuere' is the most generally popular of the four
works which make up Wagner's great tetralogy, for the inordinate length
of some of the scenes in the second act is amply atoned for by the
immortal beauties of the first and third. Twenty years ago Wagner's
enemies used to make capital out of the incestuous union of Siegmund
and Sieglinde, but it is difficult to believe in the sincerity of their
virtuous indignation. No sane person would conceivably attempt to judge
the personages of the Edda by a modern code of ethics; nor could any one
with even a smattering of the details of Greek mythology affect to
regard such a union as extraordinary, given the environment in which the
characters of Wagner's drama move. It may be noted in passing that 'Die
Walkuere' is the latest of Wagner's works in which the traces of his
earlier manner are still perceptible. For the most part, as in all his
later works, the score is one vast many-coloured web of guiding themes,
'a mighty maze, but not without a plan!' Here and there, however, occur
passages, such as the Spring Song in the first act and the solemn melody
which pervades Bruennhilde's interview with Siegmund in the second,
which, beautiful in themselves as they are, seem reminiscent of earlier
and simpler days, and scarcely harmo