To dwell upon the wretchedness, the poverty, the hunger, the crushed hopes of many years, to recall the miseries of a union with a wife who, full of good intentions as she was, neither understood him nor believed in the ultimate victory of his mighty genius—to think of Wagner, “the most German of all artists,” banished from the Fatherland which he loved so passionately, eating such bitter bread of sorrow that one cannot at this distance of time read the story without emotion—all this is only so far necessary to an understanding of Bayreuth as it shows the indomitable courage of the hero. That he should have lived through the tragic days of Paris and Zurich is little short of miraculous. Happily better times were in store for him. He was able to come back to Germany. Poor Minna Planer, from whom he had been separated for many years, died in 1866. Death severed a tie that must have been intolerable to both. Marriage must be a vengeance of devils or a reward of the gods. Wagner tasted both, for in his second marriage he found all the comfort, the agreement, and the faith in him which had been lacking in the first. Minna Planer, the actress wife, had been nothing but a hindrance, a millstone round the eager man’s neck. To be the helpmeet of a prophet, a seer, a man of genius, a woman must above all things believe in her husband, in his power to dominate men, in the magnetism of his will. What would Mohammed have been without the faith of Khadijah, who trusted him when even his own relations cried “Fool” and “Madman”? Prince Siddartha deserted his wife and her babe to wander into the wilderness in search of wisdom, but sweet Yasodhara bore him no grudge, for she had faith in his mission, and when at last he became Buddha she joined the company of believers and followed his teaching. This is the sort of trust that it was not in the nature of Minna to give. Her commonplace soul could not understand his impatience of the bonds of convention, or the wild flights of his soaring imagination. How he must have fretted under the galling restraint! How the sword must have strained to leap from the scabbard! Happily the last years of his life were blessed by the loving care and sympathy of Cosima, the daughter of his best friend, Franz Liszt—a wife rare among women, whose soul and heart were in unison with his own—and cheered by watching the growth of children whom he adored, reared in the home which he had made beautiful for their joy. But this is no attempt to give even the thinnest outline of the Master’s life. For a biography and for a complete study of his work the curious must go to the fountain head. From such study we may learn much. We hear wild talk about Wagner’s “operas”: it would be well that we should arrive at some understanding as to how far he may be said to have composed “operas” at all—that is to say, “operas” in the old accepted sense of the word. Probably the best way of facing the problem will be to take refuge in a compromise.