But if “Faust” and “Roméo” are worthy of so much admiration, that does not mean that no importance or sympathy should be attached to the composer’s other works, which, though less perfect and less lofty in character, are none the less deserving of the most active appreciation on the part of the public and of true artists. “Philémon et Baucis,” “Mireille,” “Le Médécin Malgré Lui,” are productions of unquestionable merit, and even in “Sapho” and “La Reine de Saba,” weak and unequal as they undoubtedly are, one may find pages of the rarest beauty. It should be remarked that even in his least successful works, what we may always admire in Gounod is the noblesse of his language and the splendor of his style. It is necessary to add that if, as is generally believed, fertility is a sign of force, Gounod deserves to be classed among the strongest! Few artists, indeed, have produced more or in greater variety, opera, oratorio, symphony, religious music, cantatas, vocal chamber music, (set to French, English or Italian words) choruses with or without accompaniment, compositions for piano or organ, he has touched them all, and in all has given proof of the most substantial and brilliant qualities. A very convincing proof of the power of Gounod’s personality is the influence which he has exerted for more than quarter of a century on the young French school of music. The author of Faust has brought into the art a note entirely new and unknown before him. This dreamy, poetic note is stamped with a grace and melancholy which characterizes all of Gounod’s work, and vainly have young musicians sought to reproduce and tried their best to imitate the methods of a master whose genius they did not possess, and who remained for them inimitable. Nevertheless, this influence of Gounod is the sign and the proof of his creative power. One could scarcely pass over, in speaking of such an artist, his literary proclivities, and the desire which he manifested on different occasions to set forth his ideas and the principles which he professed in matters of art. All French musicians of the present period are afflicted with a mania for writing. Not only great artists like Reyer and Saint-Saëns, following the example of Berlioz, Halévy and Adolpe Adam, undertake to criticise and make themselves the judges of their colleagues, but the most inconsequential composer of operettas gives himself to-day the airs of a writer, and believes himself called upon to deliver himself of long esthetic and philosophic discussions on the art of which he deems himself one of the noblest representatives.