It was my experience that the Germans themselves greatly admired singing of the Italian school, for when, following Sontag and Wagner, Mme. de la Grange came the next month and sang an engagement in Leipsic (April and May, 1852), the management doubled the prices, and, notwithstanding this, the house was crowded every time she sang. She was in her prime, and one of the finest singers I ever heard. Her style was brilliant and dazzling, but never lacking in repose. Her high tones were clear and musical, without any trace of shrillness, and in the most rapid passages the tones were never slurred or confused, but distinct and in perfect rhythmic order. The roles in which she most appealed to me were as _Queen of the Night_ in "The Magic Flute," by Mozart, and _Rosina_ in "The Barber of Seville," by Rossini. But she also sang both parts of _Isabella_ and _Alice_ in Meyerbeer's "Robert the Devil" in the most admirable manner. "DER VEREIN DER MURLS" Liszt was the head and front of the Wagner movement; but except when visitors came to Weimar and were inveigled into an argument by Raff, who was an ardent disciple of the new school, there was but little discussion of the Wagner question. Pruckner started a little society, the object being to oppose the Philistines, or old fogies, and uphold modern ideas. Liszt was the head and was called the Padishah (chief), and the pupils and others, Raff, Bulow, Klindworth, Pruckner, Cornelius, Laub, Cossmann, etc., were "Murls." In a letter to Klindworth, then in London, Liszt writes of Rubinstein: "That is a clever fellow, the most notable musician, pianist, and composer who has appeared to me among the modern lights--with the exception of the Murls. Murlship alone is lacking to him still." On the manuscript of Liszt's "Sonate" he himself wrote, "Fur die Murlbibliothek." THE WAGNER CAUSE IN WEIMAR My admiration for Wagner did not go to the extreme of Liszt's and of my fellow-pupils'. Liszt rarely expressed his opinion of Wagner, because he took it for granted that everybody knew it, and he was not a controversialist. I know that he considered those people who refused to follow Wagner as old fogies, and my colleagues used to twit me for not being as enthusiastic as they were. Certain passages in his operas have always given me great musical enjoyment and delight, but here and there are crudities which, as it seemed to me, were unpardonable in a great composer. Under these circumstances I could not pose as a genuine Murl, although this fact did not disturb the genial and fraternal relations which existed between my colleagues and me; and on occasion also I was equal to the best of them in exercising the specialty of a genuine Murl claqueur.