We have seen that Glinka and Dargomijsky represented two distinct tendencies in Russian operatic music. The one was lyrical and idealistic; the other declamatory and realistic. It would seem that Glinka's qualities were those more commonly typical of the Russian musical temperament, since, in the second generation of composers, his disciples outnumbered those of Dargomijsky, who had actually but one close adherent: Modeste Moussorgsky. Cui, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov were all--as we shall see when we come to a more detailed analysis of their works--attracted in varying degrees to melodic and lyric opera. Although in the first flush of enthusiasm for Dargomijsky's music-drama _The Stone Guest_--which Lenz once described as "a recitative in three acts"--the younger nationalists were disposed to adopt it as "the Gospel of the New School," Moussorgsky alone made a decisive attempt to bring into practice the theories embodied in this work. Taking Dargomijsky's now famous dictum: _I want the note to be the direct representation of the word--I want truth and realism_, as his starting-point, Moussorgsky proceeded to carry it to a logical conclusion. Rimsky-Korsakov speaks of his having passed through an early phase of idealism when he composed his Fantasia for piano "St. John's Eve" (afterwards remodelled for orchestra and now known as "Night on the Bare Mountain"), "The Destruction of Sennacherib," and the song "Night," to a poem by Poushkin. But although at first he may not have been so consciously occupied in the creation of what Rimsky-Korsakov calls "grey music," it is evident that no sooner had he found his feet, technically speaking, than he gripped fast hold of one dominant idea--the closer relationship of music with actual life. Henceforward musical psychology became the absorbing problem of his art, to which he devoted himself with all the ardour of a self-confident and headstrong nature. In a letter to Vladimir Stassov, dated October 1872, he reveals his artistic intentions in the following words: "Assiduously to seek the more delicate and subtle features of human nature--of the human crowd--to follow them into unknown regions, and make them our own: this seems to me the true vocation of the artist. Through the storm, past shoal and sunken rock, make for new shores without fear, against all hindrance!... In the mass of humanity, as in the individual, there are always some subtle impalpable features which have been passed by, unobserved, untouched by anyone. To mark these and study them, by reading, by actual observation, by intuition--in other words, to feed upon humanity as a healthy diet which has been neglected--there lies the whole problem of art." However greatly we may disagree with Moussorgsky's æsthetic point of view, we must confess that he carried out his theories with logical sequence, and with the unflinching courage of a clear conviction. His operas and his