Of all artistic enjoyments, however, two series of operatic and dramatic performances remain pre-eminent: the Wagnerian series of operas given by a Swiss company, and the series of classic and romantic drama presented by members of the "Comédie Française" of Paris. The vocal rendering of the Wagner operas could scarcely have been excelled. Herr Rudolph Jung, a young Swiss tenor, interpreted in turn Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Tristan, Hans Sachs, and Parsifal, and not only was his tone one of perfect purity and beauty, but, what is rare, his physique lent itself to the glamour of knightly armour as harmoniously as his interpretation was satisfying mentally and emotionally. Unless I am much mistaken, this young man is destined to become one of the world's greatest singers and artists. He had made his the spirit of knighthood, the spirit evoked by Wagner as opposed to the old German ideal of brute force, a fact which appears to have entirely escaped the German public and critics. It is always of knighthood that Wagner sings, of knights in conflict with material forces; and if he rescued from oblivion the sagas of a dawn of civilization, it was but as the forces against which his knights hurled themselves in the true spirit of knightly honour and disinterested service. Lohengrin rescues Elsa from false and deadly intrigue; Tannhäuser, his soul from the snares of the Venusberg; and Parsifal, proof against all false allurements, reaches the serene heights of absolute command over himself and life. Whether aware of it or not, Herr Jung ideally portrayed the knightly spirit, to save which practically the whole world is fighting the Central Empires in this terrible war. It is a trite saying: "No one is a prophet in his own country." Assuredly Wagner was not in the way he intended, as an apostle of World-Brotherhood; and perchance it was for this reason that he was banned and exiled, and forced to spend most of his life away from his native land. As to the life-work of Wagner and the lessons it teaches—fully explained in his writings—Germany appears merely to have extolled his evocations of the past, the nebulous historical sagas, and to have deified these, the better, presumably, to serve her one end and aim of conquest.