Then follows a splendid description of the brutal materialism of the Romans which hangs to this very day like a pall about her ruins: “They loved to revel in concrete and open bloodthirstiness.” Mutual slavery of Emperor and people was the result, and “self-contempt, disgust with existence, horror of community” found their expression in Christianity. But this Christianity of Constantine Wagner is careful to distinguish from the teaching of “the humble son of the Galilean carpenter; who, looking on the misery of his fellow-men, proclaimed that he had not come to bring peace, but a sword into the world; whom we must love for the anger with which he thundered forth against the hypocritical Pharisees who fawned upon the power of Rome; ... and finally who preached the reign of universal human love.” In short, one might say that Jesus and his teaching stood in the same relation to the later Christianity as Dionysus and the early pure mysteries to the later degraded and materialized Bacchic mysteries. Then in a very fine passage Wagner indicts Modern Art, based, as it is, on fame and gain and serving all the lower needs of a debased public taste. The Drama is separated into Play and Opera; the one losing its idealizer—Music,—the other, its dramatic aim and end: “What serves it us, that _Shakespeare_, like a second Creator, has opened for us the endless realm of human nature? What serves it, that _Beethoven_ has lent to Music the manly, independent strength of Poetry? Ask the threadbare caricatures of your theatres, ask the street-minstrel commonplaces of your operas: and ye have your answer!” Think of it! This was written half a century ago, and in spite of it the Music Hall more than ever sways the masses, and the cheap inanities of the comic opera are the rage with the rest of the community. I shall review the remainder of this essay in the next article. (_To be continued._) Footnote 1: Dionysus was the productive or bountiful power of Nature, and the earlier and pure conception of him was of a beauteous but manly figure, attended by the Graces and presiding over dramatic representations of Nature’s mysteries. It was only in later times that he appeared as Bacchus, the God of wine and intoxication, attended by Bacchantes, and presiding over sensual and drunken orgies. ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE. IV. POET, DIPLOMAT, TRAVELLER.