This work seems to have come at a single stroke, under the inspiration of a violent emotion. The ocean, with its rage, its awe, its mystery and sweetness--all is in this music, which is like the sea's own soul. If a few traces of the old formulæ remain, it is only in the subordinate parts of the work. The orchestra is no longer a great guitar, accompanying a song; it already assumes a capital importance; the designs, dividing and blending, have a precise meaning; the whole, less noisy, acquires a power until then unknown. The orchestral tissue becomes the woof upon which the characters are embroidered; it becomes the ocean which bears the ship, the atmosphere which envelops the action, where the thoughts, the sentiments of the heroes, reverberating, amplifying, become visible, so to speak, and make the mind experience all that is inexpressible in the sensations of the soul. The legend of Tanhäuser still exists in Germany, above all in leafy Thuringia, where the famous castle of Wartburg stands, which, under the hospitable landgraves of the thirteenth century, was the theatre of pacific contests, fought by the illustrious troubadours. In front of the castle rises a bare, dreary mountain, burned as it were, which makes a strange blot in the midst of the fresh vegetation of the neighboring valleys. This is the terrible Venusberg, inhabited, according to popular tradition, by a dangerous goddess. This divinity was formerly Hulda the beneficent, who came each year to awaken the spring, and wandered over the country scattering flowers under her feet. But being cursed by Christianity, she was obliged to take refuge in the unknown caverns of the mountain; she was soon confounded with Venus, the sovereign of the senses. The graces, syrens, bacchantes, and fauns constituted her court, and enchanting voices seduced those whose impure desires guided them toward the mountain; unknown roads enticed them, and they were borne away to the mysterious palace which it encloses, in the abode of eternal perdition, from which none return. The Knight Tanhäuser, curious and intrepid, found the path of the grottoes in the Venusberg, and was the spouse of the goddess during seven years, after which, his desires satiated and himself devoured with remorse, aspiring to human suffering, he succeeded in tearing himself from the arms of his love by invoking the Virgin Mary. He went and confessed to the pope, imploring his pardon, but the pontiff replied, "that having tasted the pleasures of hell he was forever damned." Then raising his crosier, he added, "Even as this wood cannot become green again, so is there no pardon for thee." The legend adds, that at the expiration of three days the crosier began to blossom, signifying that celestial grace is greater than that of a pontiff. It is from this recital, enlarged by a powerful spirit, that Wagner has taken his drama, inter-weaving with his own tissue the tradition