Don Juan is one of the permanent, traditional types of character; and Mozart’s music sympathetically, instinctively, rather than with any conscious philosophical purpose, brings out the essence of it. The gay gallant, magnetic disturber of every woman’s peace that comes within his sphere, is not intended for that vulgar sensualist, that swaggering street-rake, which caricatures the part in most performances we may have seen. The true conception of Mozart’s Don Juan is that of a gentleman, to say the least, and more than that, a man of genius; a being, naturally full of glorious passion, large sympathies, and irrepressible energies; noble in mind, in person, and in fortune; a large, imposing, generous, fascinating creature. Dramatically he is made a little more than human, yet in a purely human direction. He is such as we all are, “only more so,” to borrow an expressive vulgarism. Remarkably is he such as Mozart himself was. He is a sort of ideal impersonation of two qualities, or springs of character, raised as it were to the highest power, projected into supernatural dimensions—which is only the poet’s and musician’s way of truly recognizing the element of infinity in every passion of the human soul, since not one ever finds its perfect satisfaction. Mozart in his own life knew them too well, these two springs or sources of excitement! They are: (1.) the genial temperament, the exquisite zest of pleasure, the sensibility to every charm and harmony of sense, amounting to enthusiasm, and content with nothing short of ecstasy; that appetite for outward beauty, which lends such a voluptuous, Titian coloring to his music. And (2.) as the crowning enthusiasm of the young, fresh soul, as the highest mortal foretaste of celestial bliss, the sentiment of sexual love—that sentiment which is the key-note of every opera. In Mozart, music appears as the peculiar native language of these passions, these experiences. His music is all fond sensibility, pure tranquillity of rapture, and most luxurious harmony of soul and sense; and therefore in him we have the finest development of the dramatic element in music. The two together make the genuine Giovanni creed—the creed of Mozart and of Music—the natural creed and religion of joy. This free and perfect luxury of passion and fruition, Mozart imagines raised (as we have said) to the highest power, in the hero of the old tradition. His Don Juan is a grand believer in the passions and in pleasure; he is the splendid champion and Titan of that side of the problem of life, a superb vindicator of the senses. He stands before us in the glorious recklessness of self-assertion and protests against the soul-and-passion-starving conventionality, the one-sided, frigid spiritualism of an artificial, priest-ridden, Mammon-worshiping society; opposing to those meshes of restraint his own intense consciousness of _being_, (with a blind instinct that it is good, divine at bottom, and only needing to appear in its own natural