thing is that it was better received than the far more generally comprehensible "Tod und Verklärung." This was no doubt, in part, due to sheer astonishment, but also, we believe, to the perception that whatever else there may be in the work there is a certain grandeur of perception. It is scarcely possible to listen in a state of complete indifference to the opening tone-picture of sunrise, with its great booming nature ground-tone, that recalls the Introduction to Wagner's "Rheingold," and the ringing trumpet harmonies following the three notes of the soulless nature theme. The plan of the tone-poem that gradually unfolds is one of the clearest. It is on the same plan as the discourse of St. Francis on "La Joie Parfaite," quoted by Sabatier from the "Fioretti," where the holy man, the better to impress upon Brother Leo wherein perfect joy consists, first enumerates a series of things in which it does not consist, and then, having disposed of the erroneous opinions corresponding to various stages of the upward path towards true wisdom, tells us at last what perfect joy is. The wisdom of Zarathustra is, of course, very different from the wisdom of St. Francis, but his method of inculcating it is the same. He, too, has mortified the flesh with the "Hinterweltler" (perhaps "other-worldlings" is the nearest English equivalent), and thrown himself for a change into the vortex of exciting pleasures--the "Freuden und Leidenschaften" he calls them, as who should say the "fruitions and passions of youth." It is characteristic that he puts the religion first and the exciting pleasures afterwards. He also "did eagerly frequent doctor and saint and heard great argument," that experience being symbolised by Strauss's "Fugue of Science." But none of these things, he gives us to understand, by emphatic use of the "disgust" theme, is the pearl of great price, or perfect joy, or anything of the sort. The penultimate part of the tone-poem deals with the conversion of Zarathustra into a dancing philosopher--his learning of the great lesson that one must "get rid of heaviness"; and here, of course, the musician is very thoroughly in his element. Very remarkable and surprising is the conclusion. Strauss has declared that the whole composition is simply his homage to the genius of Nietzsche, but it is impossible to resist the impression that in the manner of the ending he has endeavoured to suggest an improvement on Nietzsche--and he might well be pleased with himself, and so a little overbearing, after producing that "Tanzlied" (a sort of waltz for demigods or "Uebermenschen"), which he has done much better than any other composer that ever lived could have done it. He ends with a night picture in B major against the final notes of which the persistent nature theme in C major once more reasserts itself as a pizzicato bass;--in words, "but you have left the riddle of the painful earth just as much unsolved as it was before, for all your wisdom." Whether that