The great enthusiasm of his youth had been Glinka's music, and while living at Nijny-Novgorod he had studied his operas to good purpose. Filled with zeal for the new cause, Balakirev appeared in the capital like a St. John the Baptist from the wilderness to preach the new gospel of nationality in art to the adorers of Bellini and Meyerbeer. Glinka was on the point of leaving Russia for what proved to be his last earthly voyage. But during the weeks which preceded his departure he saw enough of Balakirev to be impressed by his enthusiasm and intelligence, and to point to him as the continuator of his work. The environment of the capital proved beneficial to the young provincial. For the first time he was able to mix with other musicians and to hear much that was new to him, both at the opera and in the concert room. But his convictions remained unshaken amid all these novel experiences. From first to last he owed most to himself, and if he soon became head and centre of a new musical school, it was because, as Stassov has pointed out, "he had every gift for such a position: astonishing initiative, love and knowledge of his art, and to crown all, untiring energy." Balakirev left no legacy of opera, but his influence on Russian music as a whole was so predominant that it crops up in every direction, and henceforth his name must constantly appear in these pages. Indeed the history of Russian opera now becomes for a time the history of a small brotherhood of enthusiasts, united by a common idea and fighting shoulder to shoulder for a cause which ought to have been popular, but which was long opposed by the press and the academic powers in the artistic world of Russia, and treated with contempt by the "genteel" amateur to whom a subscription to Italian opera stood as the external sign of social and intellectual superiority. It was known as "Balakirev's set," or by the ironical sobriquet of "the mighty band." At the close of the 'fifties César Cui and Modeste Moussorgsky had joined Balakirev's crusade on behalf of the national ideal. A year or two later Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov were admitted to the circle; and subsequently a gifted young amateur, Nicholas Lodyjensky, attached himself for a time to the nationalists. To these names must be added that of the writer, Vladimir Stassov, whose active brain and pen were always at the service of the new school. Although Glinka had no further personal intercourse with Balakirev and his friends, Dargomijsky, as we have already seen, gladly opened his house as a meeting place for this group of young enthusiasts, who eagerly discussed questions of art with the older and more experienced musician, and watched with keen interest the growth of his last opera, _The Stone Guest_.