ideally beautiful performances of Isolde and Leonora more than ten years ago in London. The Wotan of Herr C. Perron was another impersonation that improved, in the first cycle, from day to day; at first the excellent singer was sadly perfunctory, but in Siegfried the fine passages allotted to the Wanderer were given with much dignity. Those who attended the first cycle had the great advantage of hearing two Siegfrieds, for Herr Grüning, after a moderately successful appearance in that part of the drama named from the hero, was succeeded by Herr Burgstaller on the final day. This artist should make a great career: his voice is of fine quality, and he acts with delightful conviction and point; he has also the nameless quality by which a personality of distinct charm conveys itself to the audience. In the first rank of the female impersonations stands the Waltraute of Frau Schumann-Heink, who also sang the music of Erda and the First Norn with great vocal beauty and distinction. Frau Reuss-Belce was a good Gutrune, and the representatives of Rhine-maidens, Norns, and Valkyries were quite efficient. The Siegmund of Herr Gerhäuser was a sad failure, but Herr Breuer did well as Mime, Herr Grengg was a first-rate Hagen, and Herr Gross a manly Gunther. The ponderous voice of Herr Elmblad was exactly suited to the music of Fafner, whose bodily representative in Siegfried was a triumph of mechanical skill. No more fearful dragon than this has been seen upon the stage; and another very meritorious monster was the serpent into which Alberich transforms himself in the Rheingold. The acting of Herr Friedrichs in the latter character was admirable, though his singing was scarcely above the average attained by non-musical actors. The return of Herr Richter to Bayreuth as principal conductor is a matter on which the management is to be heartily congratulated.

The mounting of the whole cycle was extremely fine, at least in respect of the scenery; while the most famous scenes of 1876 were repeated almost exactly, down to the smallest details, certain scenes that were not so remarkable then are now transformed into stagepictures of the utmost beauty. The opening scene with the Rhinedaughters is entirely successful, and the new machinery by which their motions are controlled is a complete success. The second act of Die Walküre and certain passages in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were also most commendable. It is hard to bestow unqualified praise upon the costumes, the majority of which were exceedingly disappointing; German taste in such particulars is notoriously bad, and here is a point in which a little cosmopolitanism would come in most usefully. And it is hard to see how Bayreuth is to keep up its position if it does not move with the times to some extent. The absence of innovations in the text hardly calls for praise, since any such piece of vandalism would be wholly foreign to the spirit in which the institution is managed; but against one piece of inter

polated stage business an emphatic protest must be made. There is a celebrated point near the end of Das Rheingold where Wotan, shortly before leading the procession of the gods across the rainbow bridge, conceives the idea of redeeming the treasure, with the power of the magic ring, by means of a hero whose parentage and education are dealt with in the two successive dramas; the use of the 'leitmotiv' afterwards connected with the sword here enabled the composer to tell the audience what Wotan is thinking of, without any help from words or action. It has struck someone at Bayreuth that the musical theme alone might possibly not be recognised by many of the audience; and in deference to their stupidity an actual sword is introduced at this point which appears to have formed part of the Nibelungen treasure, a theory that is entirely unsupported by the words of the later dramas, where the sword Nothung is stated to have belonged in the first instance to Wälse, i.e. Wotan, in the disguise adopted by him for the sake of generating the family of the Wälsungs or Volsungs. To attribute the sword to the treasure, and to produce it in tangible form, is to vulgarise one of the most refined touches in the whole trilogy, and one which more than perhaps any other single passage justifies the principles upon which Wagner worked. The power of suggestion by means of a musical theme previously identified, or afterwards to be identified, with some definite dramatic factor is the great advantage of the system carried to such a point of development by Wagner, and anything which materialises his ideas, as is done here, is sincerely to be regretted.1

Bayreuth must hold the highest standard in every department of the dramatic and musical arts; if it ceases to give the pattern, as it were, on which other performances are to be modelled, its raison d'être will cease also, and the moment it lowers its ideals its vogue must pass away, and the noble building fall into disuse. For, considering the absence of any other attraction to the Bavarian town, which is on the way to no special pleasure-resort, it cannot hold its own unless the attractions of its performances are infinitely greater than those of any other theatre on the Continent, at least in the way of artistic presentment of the works given; and although that part of Wagner's original scheme which was concerned with the production of important operas by other men may well be allowed to be ignored, yet the Wagner performances must maintain their importance if the place is to continue its work in the world. It would be disaster if it all came to naught, and those most deeply interested must see to it that this veritable Götterdämmerung' shall not arrive for many years to come.

J. A. FULLER MAITLAND.

1 It has been asserted that this 'business' was permitted by Wagner himself in 1876, as a concession to the less acute among the audience; but if this is so, it is strange that Herr Richter, who conducted the festival of twenty years ago, should know nothing about it.

1896

THE BAPTISM OF CLOVIS

THERE is nothing which indicates more strikingly the growth of the historic sentiment among all classes during the last twenty or thirty years than the fashion which has sprung up of celebrating the anniversary of some great event in the remote past, or the birth or death of some distinguished or heroic personage. These celebrations have been rapidly increasing upon us of late, not without causing some little bewilderment to worthy people whose knowledge of history is not their strong point. They are surprised to hear that Hungary, for instance, can lay claim to a millennium of anything; or that there could be any reason why excited experts should go into hysterics because eight centuries had actually been completed since the Domesday Book was drawn up; or that there was so much that was worth remembering at Durham or Ely or Norwich all those hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Cynical Philistines, on the other hand, have been prone to ask whether it might not be just as well to let bygones be bygones-whether we are any the better for loading our memories with facts which have travelled down to us from so very long ago that a critical age may be prepared to question whether they are likely to be true; or whether, if true in the main, much of the glamour which surrounds them may not be due to the mists through which we look back at them-inasmuch as the past will win a glory from its being far,' and also inasmuch as we are agreed that 'distance lends enchantment to the view.'

It is always better to let the cynics have their say and to forbear from arguing with them. We and they do not stand upon the same platform, nor start from the same premises. In this particular instance they are in an evil case as being a small sect of unfortunates who count themselves wiser than the rest of us, and yet who are bound to find themselves more and more in a hopeless and soured minority. The spirit of the age is against them, and, however little they may be able to understand it, the truth is that the cynics are always behind, never before, their time.

Our near neighbours across the Channel have of late been throwing themselves with a great deal of excitement into one anniversary

which in its multifarious pomps and ceremonies has been, and is, making its appeal on the one side to the patriotism of Frenchmen, and on the other side to the religious beliefs and aspirations and hopes of the devout and fervent millions of the Catholic population of the great Republic. The Government has betrayed no little. anxiety as to what may come of it all, and have actually put forth stringent orders to restrain the French bishops from meeting in too large numbers simultaneously, lest a religious demonstration on too large a scale should result in some frenzied outbreak which might be dangerous to the public welfare. Surtout pas trop de religion! seems to be the ruling principle of philosophers who profess unbounded liberty of thought.

And yet this great French anniversary will celebrate nothing worse than the baptism of Clovis, King of the Franks, in the Cathedral of Reims, on Christmas Day, 496-the baptism, that is, of the man whom Frenchmen regard as the founder of their national institutions, the beginner of their national life, the establisher of their national faith, the saviour of European society in an age when things were tending towards chaos. Whether this view of the case be anything but a hugely exaggerated view is one question--that it is the view of the average Frenchman whom one meets by the wayside, and who has anything to say of Clovis, is hardly a question at all. Much less is it a question that the event commemorated by this year's anniversary in France has been one of almost incalculable importance in its influence upon the social, religious, and political sentiments and beliefs of European peoples, nations and languages down to the present hour, and that it marked an epoch in the history of the world.

Who were these Franks? When Julius Cæsar, after eight years of ceaseless warfare, effected the complete subjugation of Gaul, fifty-one years before our era, Rome found herself not only with a new dependency to govern, but she found herself with a new race to take account of a race which for centuries afterwards became an enormous source of wealth and power to the Empire. Gaul in its widest extent comprehended all that is now included in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Alsace-Lorraine.

The inhabitants of this wide territory were of the same blood, with a religion and with a polity of their own. They had something like national assemblies; they had a powerful priesthood, which exercised great influence over the people; they were brave, intelligent, rich, and civilised up to that point at which a nation is prepared to assimilate and absorb whatever better things its neighbours or its masters may have to offer. What the Celts are to-day, that they were on the Loire and Seine in Cæsar's days; and what that means I must refer to the great historian of Rome to tell those who would fain

know. The point is, those Gauls were Celts; while on the other side of the Rhine there were the teeming and restless Teutonic peoples, who for some time past had been finding their own land too strait for them. Not only that, but the climate and the soil of the South were a clime and a soil of a land of promise; for generations they had longed to possess that good land so much better than their own. It was in consequence of a great emigration from the upper Rhine by some of these German tribes resolved on finding a new home for themselves across the river that Cæsar was sent to drive them back. The end was that the Rhine became the boundary between Rome and Germany. When Gaul became a Roman province it was supremely necessary to defend it against the barbarians who should try to cross over. All along its left bank, from Mayence to Cologne, there was a wide belt which was in fact a gigantic military district occupied by an army of no less than eight legions, or an aggregate of 100,000 men, cantoned in fifty fortresses or fortified camps. Up and down the stream two fleets were always moving, watching the navigation and the movements of the dwellers on the opposite bank, who were continually threatening to force a passage across the barrier and pour in upon the plains of Gaul.

It was not long before it was found politic to cut off the northern portion of the new territory, and make of it a new prefecture, under the name of Gallia Belgica. Draw a line on the map from Dieppe to Strasburg, and you may take it that the triangle of which this line is the base, and the Rhine with the coast along the North Sea and the Channel the other two sides, roughly indicates the boundaries of this province, of which in the fourth century the father of St. Ambrose was the governor. Under the wise administration of the Romans this country became one of the most thriving and prosperous dependencies of the Empire. When the poet Ausonius made a voyage hither in the middle of the fourth century, he was enraptured with what he saw as he sailed down the Moselle, more beautiful and more populous than it is to-day. Trêves was accounted the fourth city of the Empire. It possessed what may be called a university, in which, under the supervision of Lactantius, Constantine's son Crispus probably pursued his studies. Here St. Ambrose was born, and here St. Jerome seems to have spent some years; and here we are told he went through one of those religious crises in his life which determined his after career. By this time, and perhaps a century at least before this time, the Belgic Gaul was emphatically a Christian land. Soissons, Strasburg, and Reims had each its bishop, and at Trèves there was an archbishop or metropolitan. Trade, commerce, manufactures, and litera

1 Mommsen, History of Rome, Book V. chap. vii. vol. i. pt. i. p. 286, English translation.