It was when Wagner threw over the entire apparatus of the cyclic form and the _lied_ and utilized to the utmost the resources of chromatic modulation, that music in the drama entered completely into the office of emotional expression. A new form was developed: that in which a set of melodic fragments, each with a definite significance, was woven into an instrumental ocean upon which the voice-parts floated like enchanted shallops. Wagner fairly fulfilled the Pater conception of the truly speculative artist, one "by whom no touch of the world of form, color, and passion was disregarded." Gluck treated poetry as a jewel, for which he as an artist was to provide the most chaste, beautiful, and appropriate setting. Wagner viewed poetry and music as two precious metals which he was to melt in the crucible of his genius into a new and more glorious product. We stand to-day, in so far as opera is concerned, upon the ground cleared for us by Wagner. The Italians are striving to follow his lead, though they are instinctively and almost ineffectively endeavoring to preserve in their works that outward shape of vocal melody which is a clearly drawn national characteristic. Since Verdi's "Falstaff" nothing has been written which is of high import, for the calm contemplation of criticism cannot be deceived by the superficial cleverness of "Tosca," "La Bohème," and "Pagliacci," or the Mascagni turgidities. These works sparkle with the jewels of talent, but they never glow with the sunlight of genius. One act of Verdi's "Otello" or Boito's "Mefistofele" pales their reflected fires to the sickly yellow of a farthing rushlight. But these writers are striving to advance beyond Wagner in the subtlety of the inner processes which they put into music. In all the Wagnerian drama there is no such purely modern product as the Scarpia of Puccini or the Osaka of Mascagni. Loge is elemental. He is a superhuman poetic creation, as well suited to the investiture of music as Milton's Lucifer. But setting Scarpia and Osaka to music is much like composing Joseph Chamberlain or Thomas Collier Platt. The reaction of all this refinement of the means of expression in the musical drama upon instrumental music has led the song without words into a new country. The primitive descriptions of Kuhnau and Bach now make us smile. We have hunted the central secret to its lair. We have asked music to sing not only those broad moods of joy and sadness, peace and rage, which the imitation of the inflections of the voice in speech made possible for her in the very infancy of inarticulate song, but we have demanded that she chase the intellectual concept to its source and embody reasonings and conclusions as if she were the handmaid of the inductive method.