And, everywhere, we see recent requirements masked and concealed behind Greek, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, and Baroque embellishments, thrown together helter-skelter, and with a disregard of structural demands which must startle even the uninitiated.[27] Our streets are ugly in the extreme.[28] Only at night, as Camille Mauclair says, does the artificial light convert their hideousness into a sort of lugubrious grandeur,[29] and that is perhaps why, to the sensitive artistic Londoner, the darkness of night or the pale glow of the moon is such a solace and relief. As to the state of modern music, this is best described perhaps, though with perfectly unconscious irony, by Mr. Henry Davey, in the opening words of his _Student's Musical History_. "Music has indeed been defined," he says, "as 'sound with regular vibrations,' other sounds being called noise. This definition," the author adds, "is only suited to undeveloped music; modern music may include noise and even silence."[30] People are mistaken if they suppose that Nietzsche, in attacking Wagner as he did, was prompted by any personal animosity or other considerations foreign to the question of music. In Wagner, Nietzsche saw a Romanticist of the strongest possible type, and he was opposed to the Romantic School of Music, because of its indifference to form. Always an opponent of anarchy, despite all that his critics may say to the contrary, Nietzsche saw with great misgiving the decline and decay of melody and rhythm in modern music, and in attacking Wagner as the embodiment of the Romantic School, he merely personified the movement to which he felt himself so fundamentally opposed. And in this opposition he was not alone. The Romantic movement, assailed by many, will continue to be assailed, until all its evil influences are exposed. "Since the days of Beethoven," says Emil Naumann, "instrumental music, generally speaking, has retrograded as regards spontaneity of invention, thematic working, and mastery of art form,"[31] and the same author declares that he regards all modern masters as the natural outcome of the Romantic era.[32] Nietzsche has told us in his Wagner pamphlets what he demands from music,[33] and this he certainly could not get from the kind of music which is all the rage just now. What it lacks in invention it tries to make up in idiosyncrasy, intricacy, and complexity, and that which it cannot assume in the matter of form, it attempts to convert into a virtue and a principle.[34] "Bombast and complexity in music," says P. von Lind, "as in any other art, are always a sign of inferiority; for they betray an artist's incapacity to express himself simply, clearly, and exhaustively--three leading qualities in our great heroes of music (_Tonheroen_). In this respect the whole of modern music, including Wagner's, is inferior to the music of the past."[35]