opera closes with a song of thanksgiving to the Midsummer Sun. The poetical death-scene of the Snow Maiden; Kupava's passionate love song and her incantation to the bees; the pastoral songs of the shepherd Lel; the folk-song choruses; sometimes with accompaniments for the _gusslee_; the fairy scene in the forest and the return of the birds with the flight of winter--these things cannot fail to charm those who have not altogether outgrown the glamour of the world's youth with its belief in the personification of natural forces. This opera is truly national, although it deals with legendary rather than historical events. This, however, as M. Camille Bellaigue points out, does not mean that its nationality is superficial or limited. Speaking of the wonderful scene in the palace of the King of Berendei, where he is seen sitting on his throne surrounded by a company of blind bards singing solemn airs to the accompaniment of their primitive harps, the French critic says: "Such a chorus as this has nothing in common with the official chorus of the courtiers in old-fashioned opera. In the amplitude and originality of the melody, in the vigour of the arpeggio accompaniment, in the exotic savour of the cadence and the tonality, we divine something which belongs not merely to the unknown but to infinitude.... But there is something which the music of Rimsky-Korsakov expresses with still greater force and charm, with an originality which is at once both stronger and sweeter, and that is the natural landscape, the forms and colours, the very face of Russia itself. In this respect the music is something more than national, it is to a certain extent native, like the soil and sky of the country."[48]