Wagner in music, and Nietzsche in _Also Sprach Zarathustra_, were among originators of modern art. _Zarathustra_ was perhaps the first new verse. The movement has been carried on by other nations. I am not sure that Germany did not discover the modern world. England seldom originates. Nietzsche speaks of loving the south as a school of healing. There we hear the poet. He thinks music in the north grows pale, yellow, sick for the sun. There his longing burst forth. There was something resplendent, tropical, luxurious, in Nietzsche, which the north could not let flower. The soul of Nietzsche resembled glowing canvasses of Turner. It was filled with the same bursts of light. He needed, to be happy, effective, some equatorial land of the soul, lighted by greater suns of forthcoming strange civilizations, whose boundaries are non-geographical, where his superhuman dreams could find encouragement. While his body was bounded by Germany, his mind lived anywhere, at will. In modern art, even France is borrower, like England. France habituated to lead the way, because her new art came from Wagner, and the north. It was in the glowing, resplendent mirror of his music, that brilliant, receptive France, surprised at first and not a little vexed, caught the thought, _vision_, of strange, revolutionary, æsthetic ways, which later she tried to persuade herself she found first, then pursued alone. Wagner, in short, taught expression, something different. He was first to fit closely, and with skill, another garment to the soul, the soul that had changed after the Great Revolution, and was no more capable of holding proudly the princely toga. The range of emotions, expressions, is greater in modern art than in classic art. And certainly more richly, subtly shaded. Modern art does not let a fragment slip away. It takes account of the ugly, brutal, disgusting, obscene. Classical art preserved only beauty. It skimmed the cream, then threw the milk away. The ages have made us poor. Now we must take care of the milk beneath. Now we must set about making cheese. Now we must not disdain peasant work. Among early ones to take firm stand against the classic order, were Wagner with tone, Nietzsche with words, Delacroix with color. Classic art was a straight line. Modern art is a line infinitely curved. But fresh complexities were creeping into life, with gradual rise to power of the masses of voracious appetite, multiple mood. Art is not now for aristocrats of superb culture. It is not made for a lonely Petronius in the silence, the secrecy of a violet-perfumed palace.