Wagner, the political exile, were affected by the successive events of 1789 to 1848. As proof of how closely musical history coincides with the revolution wrought by these momentous years, let us recall that Beethoven, the real source of romantic music, lived at the time of Napoleon and by the _Eroica_ symphony actually touches Napoleon; and that by the year 1848, which is the last of those dates which we have chosen as the historic outline of the romantic movement in music, Schubert and Weber were long dead, Mendelssohn was dead, Chopin was almost on his deathbed, Schumann was drifting toward the end, Berlioz was weary of life, and Liszt was working quietly at Weimar, which had been for years one of the most liberal spots in Germany. And, as if Wagner’s dreams of a mighty national music attended the realization of the dream of all Germany, the foundation stone of the national theatre at Bayreuth was laid hardly a year after the unity of the German empire was declared at Versailles in 1871. How shall we characterize the music of this period? In musical terms it is almost impossible to characterize it as a whole, for the steady stream of tradition had broken up violently into a multitude of forms and styles, and these must be characterized one by one as they come under our consideration. As a whole, it must be characterized in broader terms. For the assertion of the Parisian mob was at the bottom of it all. Previously men’s imaginations had been bounded by the traditional types; they took it for granted that they must contain themselves within the limitations to which they had been born. But since a dirty rabble had overturned the power of the Bourbons, and an obscure Corsican had married into the house of Hapsburg, men realized that nothing is impossible; limitations are made only to be broken down. The intellectual giant of the age had brought this realization to supreme literary expression in ‘Faust,’ the epic of the man who would include within himself all truth and all experience. And, whereas the ideal of the previous age had been to work within limits and so become perfect, the ideal of this latter age was to work without limits and so become great. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century this sense of freedom to achieve the impossible was the presiding genius of music.