been said and done in defence of the book, the fact remains that it is the attitude of the hero and heroine of the play to a mystery which is wholly outside the action and cannot be brought within the sympathetic cognizance of the spectators, that supplies the motive to the conduct of _Adolar_ and _Euryanthe_. [Illustration: WEBER LEADING HIS OPERA OF "DER FREISCHÜTZ" AT COVENT GARDEN THEATRE IN 1826. From a characteristic and truthful lithographed sketch made shortly before his death and published by J. Dickinson, 114 New Bond Street, London.] The device of introducing the _largo_ episode in the overture of "Euryanthe" to accompany a tableau temporarily disclosed by the withdrawal of the curtain, the tableau having a bearing on the ghostly part of the dramatic tale, may be said to serve not only to prove Weber's appreciation of the fundamental defect of the book, but also to indicate his anxiety to establish a more intimate relationship between the instrumental introduction and the drama. The choral "Ave Maria" in the overture to Meyerbeer's "Dinorah" and the Siciliano in the prelude to Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" are but variations of Weber's futile invention. It would be unavailing to deny that the want of symphonic development in Weber's overtures, the circumstance that they are little else than potpourris of melodies idealized in a manner by the splendor of their instrumentation, prevents them from aspiring to the dramatic dignity and significance of such overtures as Mozart wrote for "Don Giovanni" and Beethoven for "Fidelio." As a creative composer Weber was first of all a melodist, secondarily a colorist. His want of constructive skill was held up as a reproach to him by his colleagues all through his career. It is not to make a plea in behalf of lawlessness to say that this deficiency in Weber's artistic equipment was less detrimental to his works and influence than a deficiency in any other department would have been. Not a destruction of form but an extension of forms, an adaptation of the vessel to its new contents, was a necessary consequence of the introduction of the Romantic spirit as a dominant element in music. The Romanticism of the poets who inspired the musical Romanticists, consisted not only in their effort to overthrow the stilted rhetoric and pedantry of the German writers who were following stereotyped French models, but also in their effort to disclose the essential beauty which pervades the world of mystery beyond the plain realities of this life. They found the elements of their creations in the imaginative literature of the Middle Ages,--the marvellous and fantastic stories of chivalry and superstition. A man like Schumann touches hands with these poets in all of their strivings. His music rebels against the formalism which had assumed despotic dominion over the art, and also expresses the thousand and one emotions to which that formalism refused adequate expression. Weber's art was so deeply