Wagner was not afraid to write songs when he needed them in his art. It is a grave mistake to sell the Italian birthright of vocal melody for a mess of orchestral pottage. And it is altogether unnecessary. These young Italians must let alone their attempts to set reason to music. Their latest librettos contain too much philosophizing and not enough passion. Zanetto is altogether too sophisticated to be typical. Sylvia thinks too much. Osaka in "Iris" is altogether too much a man of the world. Iris is a human doll. Kyoto is an accomplished speculator in human folly. These are not figures to be animated with great music. They forbid its presence. These young Italians must get back to a realization of the fundamental truth that music is the speech of emotion. Love, hate, fear, elation, depression, grief,--these are for music to interpret. But you cannot discuss Christianity and positivism in lyrics, nor make intelligent comment in six-eight time on the causes of poverty. The limitations of music are far smaller even than those of lyric poetry, yet its field is as large as that of the true drama, for it is that of all human emotion. Do they need a model? Well, there is one of whom they seemingly know not. Away back in the years before even Rossini assailed flaccid Paris with the strenuous peal of "William Tell," a German boy of seventeen wrote in 1814 a song called "Gretchen am Spinnrade," and the following year he cast upon the waters that marvellous condensed drama "Der Erl-König." In the five minutes of that one song by Franz Peter Schubert lies the history of a human soul. It is an epitome of emotion, and the piano does quite as much as the voice--but not more--in the expression. If the young Italians would like to learn something more than they already know about the way to build condensed opera, let them study the songs of Schubert. There they will find a solution of the problem of how to combine perfect vocal melody with a dramatic accompaniment without sacrificing one iota of dramatic verity. An additional question of high import is whether these young firebrands are not setting the torch to the roots of nationality in their art. It is useless for theoreticians to argue that there is no nationality in music. There is nationality in all art, and the "Virgin" painted by Rubens is a Flemish woman just as surely as she is Italian when limned by Michael Angelo. There never was a German who could have conceived the lilt of "Funiculi, funicula," nor an Italian who could have composed "Schwesterlein." No Russian could have penned the dainty "Pierre et sa Mie," nor could a Frenchman have imagined "Ay Ouchnem." Only an Englishman could have written "Rule Britannia," of which Wagner said that the first four measures contained the whole character of the English people.