And now as to the character of Sarastro. Of all the human shapes that Mozart had met in life, his father’s, after that of his beloved Constance, had the firmest hold upon him, and this spite of his misunderstandings of, and even want of confidence in, his son, in his declining years. And had not his personal experience with men, next to his artistic experiences, come to him, in real life and even in public life, in the guise, so to speak, of the rulers of his existence? Was not the emperor Joseph and the order of Free Masons the highest ideal of purely humanitarian aims that his imagination could conceive? All this had nothing whatever to do with his religious feelings. His Church and his own personal faith were things apart. He thought, indeed, that their abuses, as for instance the immoderate increase of the religious orders, might be attacked, but that which constituted their very core, and their truth, were sublimely beyond the reach of doubt. But while these last, in that which is imperishable in them, now found their holiest expression in the _Requiem_, it could not but be, that those parts of the new opera descriptive of those higher purely human aims, should participate in the solemn sacred tones that poured from Mozart’s soul. And hence we need not hesitate to say that the _Requiem_ and the _Magic Flute_ tell us all that Mozart’s heart knew and felt of heaven and of earth, that it transfigured the earthly in the light of heaven, and sought from heaven to bring down peace to earth. We know this both from the chorus: _O goldene Ruh’ steig hernieder, Kehr in den Menschen Herzen wieder_, as well as from Tamino’s painful, longing exclamation: _O ew’ge Nacht, wann wirst du schwinden? Wann wird das Licht mein Auge finden?_ It is the expression of a homesickness divine, a craving for God, the highest good for the human soul.