In the chapters dealing with Balakirev and his circle I have given a picture of the social and artistic conditions in St. Petersburg to which the young sailor returned in the autumn of 1865. In common with other members of this school, Rimsky-Korsakov's musical development at this time was carried on as it were _à rebours_, Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt and Glinka being his early ideals and models. During the years of his pupilage with Balakirev, he composed, besides his first symphony, the Symphonic Picture "Sadko," a Fantasia on Servian Themes, the Symphony with an Oriental programme entitled "Antar," and the opera _The Maid of Pskov_, now usually given abroad under the title of _Ivan the Terrible_. In his "Chronicle of my Musical Life" Rimsky-Korsakov shows clearly that after passing through a phase of blind idolatry for Balakirev and his methods, he began, largely by reason of his orderly, industrious, and scrupulously conscientious nature, to feel the need of a more academic course of training. He realised the defects in his theoretical education most keenly when, in 1871, Asanchievsky, who had just succeeded Zaremba as Director of the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, offered him a post as professor of practical composition and also the direction of the orchestral class. Urged by his friends, and prompted by a certain self-assurance which he asserts was born of his ignorance, Rimsky-Korsakov accepted the post, being permitted at the same time to remain in the naval service. Although he had composed "Sadko," "Antar," and other attractive and well-sounding compositions, he had worked, so far, more or less intuitively and had not been grounded in the particular subjects which form the curriculum of a musical academy. Probably it mattered much less than his scrupulous rectitude prompted him to suppose, that he felt unfit to lecture upon _rondo_-form, and had his work as a conductor yet to learn. The main thing was that he brought a fresh, breezy, and wholly Russian current of thought into the stuffy atmosphere of pedantic classicism which must have been engendered under Zaremba's directorate.[46] Indeed, according to his own modest account, things seem to have gone well with the orchestral and instrumentation classes. From this time, however, began that strong reaction in favour of classicism and "the schools," upon which his progressive friends looked with dismay; to them his studies appeared merely the cult of musical archæology--a retrogressive step to be deeply deplored. On the other hand Tchaikovsky hailed it as a sign of grace and repentance. "Rimsky-Korsakov," writes the composer of the "Pathetic" symphony to N. von Meck, in 1877, "is the one exception (in the matter of conceit and stiff-necked pride) to the rest of the new Russian school. He was overcome by despair when he realised how many profitable years he had lost and that he was following a road which led nowhere. He began to