It was well for me that I was so thoroughly prepared, as to be the better able to profit by the unusual and really admirable course of instruction Herr Sauerwein now entered on. Its range was wide and varied, history--and English constitutional history in particular--occupying a very considerable part of it, an exhaustive knowledge of the political development of that country being deemed essential, at a moment when all other nations seemed bent on blindly copying English customs and institutions, however little compatible these might be with their own mind and character. Many a State has since had to learn to its cost, the mistake of transplanting growths of foreign culture upon their soil, and the impossibility of amalgamating these alien elements with the national life. But at that time, in Germany as elsewhere, the admiration for all things English made historians like Macaulay and Carlyle extremely popular, and also encouraged the study of English literature. That part of the programme was pure delight to me. Under my new preceptor’s guidance I obtained a comprehensive survey of the whole vast field, from Chaucer to modern times. The Scottish dialect was no bar to my appreciation of Burns; many of his poems I learnt by heart, and can remember still. But the literature of my own country was not neglected, and here also we started reviewing it from its origins, deciphering early Gothic fragments, continuing our quest through Eddas and Nibelungen, and lingering with joyful pride among the heroes sung of by Gottfried and by Wolfram, in the poems that are so glorious a national heritage. So well did I love them, the noble knights of King Arthur’s Court, and the doughty champions of the Holy Grail, that I can hardly forgive Wagner the liberties he has taken with these fine old stories, in order to suit them to the requirements of his music, glorious though that be. The versions of these sublime legends given by Wagner came doubtless as a revelation to those to whom they were as yet unknown;--but to us, who had lived among them and loved them from our birth, his arbitrary mode of treatment was rather of the nature of a sacrilege. The term is perhaps too strong, but I cannot forget my keen disappointment at certain features of the representations at Bayreuth. It is on this account that I prefer the _Meistersinger_ to all Wagner’s other works, since he had here no legend to alter or spoil, but simply a material which he could turn and twist as he pleased, and which could only gain by his skilful handling and by the musical atmosphere which his genius conjured up around the personages of his drama.