The main theme of this fine article is the relation of Art to the Universal Brotherhood of Man. It is prefaced by an introduction written in 1872 which begins with Carlyle’s trenchant words on “that universal Burning-up, as in hell-fire, of Human Shams.” Wagner goes on to explain how the essay was written “in the feverish excitement of the year 1849.” This was the revolution which cost him so many years of painful exile at Paris and Zürich. He says he was guided by an ideal which he thought of as “embodied in a Folk that should represent the incomparable might of ancient brotherhood, while I looked forward to the perfect evolution of this principle as the very essence of the associate Manhood of the Future.” After some explanations of certain technical words which might be misunderstood, Wagner introduces us to the essay itself. He begins by saying that the essence of Modern Art is only a link in a chain of causes started by the Ancient Greeks. The Grecian spirit found its fullest expression in the god Apollo: “It was Apollo,—he who had slain the Python, the dragon of Chaos ... who was the fulfiller of the will of Zeus upon the Grecian earth; who was, in fact, the Grecian people.” Proceeding then to connect Dance and Song, as inseparable elements in early Greek Art, he says: “Thus, too, inspired by Dionysus,[1] the tragic poet saw this glorious god; when to all the rich elements of spontaneous art ... he joined the bond of speech, and concentrating them all into one focus, brought forth the highest conceivable form of art—the DRAMA.” That this Drama was a religious teacher connected with the Mysteries is very clearly brought out, and Wagner draws a fine picture of one of those great sacred days when thirty thousand people assembled to witness “that most pregnant of all tragedies, the _Prometheus_; in this titanic masterpiece to see the image of themselves, to read the riddle of their own actions, and to fuse their own being and their own communion with that of their god.” How fell this glorious Tragedy? “As the spirit of _Community_ split itself along a thousand lives of egoistic cleavage, so was the great united work of Tragedy disintegrated into its individual factors.” For two thousand years since then Art has given way to Philosophy; but “True Art is highest freedom” and can only arise out of freedom.