Antagonism is the true word, for Berlioz in his vocal works at least never departed from the models so dear to the public. In fact, so far as opera is concerned, he remained ever the disciple and admirer of Spontini and of Gluck, without dreaming that he was destined soon to initiate a revolution in this branch of musical art. Even when, at the height of his own romantic fervor, he broke down the barriers of the symphony, there always remained in Berlioz an instinctive respect for consecrated forms; and as soon as he passed from the concert-room to the stage he conformed in the most ingenious manner imaginable to the old methods in all his works written with an eye to the opera house. He was deliberately revolutionary in the symphony only, and that chiefly in respect to instrumentation. With this creator, endowed with a phenomenal genius in a certain way, the ideas regarding the essential conditions of musical art were so unsettled, and changed so often from one time and from one style to another, that he would have been puzzled to formulate them with any exactness. He emitted fire and flames, he hurled curses and roared bitter denunciations, but when it came to deciding the ideal that an artist should follow or the absolute principles he should adopt, he did nothing. There exists a radical difference between the two great musicians who have convulsed the musical world in the second half of this century. The later-comer, Richard Wagner, pursued a fully defined ideal, a single problem, on the solving of which he had long concentrated his thoughts and all the force of his genius, viz.:—the fusion of music and the drama. He kept steadily in this one path and brought the music-drama to the highest point it is possible for it to attain. Berlioz, on the contrary, realized at one stroke all the modifications that seemed to him desirable to fasten upon the symphony and the opera. He did not seek an integral reform, but simply wished to enrich each branch of musical art with new descriptive and picturesque elements. But while his flexible brain turned now toward the stage, now toward the church, or the concert-room, he did not deviate much from the traditional forms, though he endowed them with new and wonderful characteristics.