The warmest enthusiast for the C. L. S. C. has never recommended it to young men and women with means and opportunity to pursue a regular college course. On the contrary it has been a claim from the beginning that it tends to arouse in many a home the ambition to have son and daughter enjoy the advantages of the college training. But to the thousands of C. L. S. C. students to whom opportunity is past, or to whom it never came for want of time and money, to those and other thousands of well wishers it will be of interest to consider how and to what extent the C. L. S. C. may be deemed a substitute.
It should be borne in mind that the college proper is entirely distinct from the professional school. The former aims to give that general and accurate knowledge and training which prepares for the work and duties of life. The latter is wholly technical in its character. Now, keeping this definition in view and comparing the C. L. S. C. with the college, we shall see that each possesses its points of superiority and inferiority. The college has facilities for taking the student of physics and chemistry into apparatus-room and laboratory where he may witness experiment and illustration of great practical value. The C. L. S. C. student reaches the same facts and conclusions through the cuts and explanations of text-books, supplemented in many cases by experiments of his own, which, though rude, are often the most valuable of all. All that acquaintance with the operations and formulæ of higher mathematics which the college student with taste and talent for such things may possess, the C. L. S. C. student does not have. But the result wrought out through these higher mathematical processes with all their various practical applications are brought to his knowledge. The C. L. S. C. student does not have the benefit of a critical study of Latin and Greek, but he gets through history and the literatures of these languages as large an acquaintance with Greece and Rome. Horace Greeley, when reminded of the impossibility of his obtaining a good knowledge of the old classic authors because of his ignorance of the languages in which they wrote, replied that he did not think it necessary to eat a few feet of “lead pipe every day in order to get a pint of Croton water.” Whatever may be the strength or weakness of such reasoning it must be admitted that acquaintance with the thought and feeling of mankind is the highest fruit of language study. This, through faithful and scholarly translations, the C. L. S. C. student receives.
In the departments of general history and English literature the C. L. S. C. has a wider range and requires more than the college. It has its special courses which correspond with the idea of elective studies in the more advanced colleges of the times. The C. L. S. C. possesses, too, the advantages of all the improved methods of instruction, so far as circumstances will permit of their application: the lecture, the text-book, the question and answer. The student may lose something by reason of the long distance in miles between himself and the author or lecturer who is his teacher, but he is somewhat compensated by the better facilities which he possesses for the development of habits of personal investigation and self-reliance. The C. L. S. C. is not the college but in many features it is like the college. It is the best substitute for it known.
Wagner.
The recent death of Richard Wagner removes from the world of art one, the greatness of whose work it would be difficult to exaggerate. His musical devotees, who are in every land, and who pay him the most enthusiastic homage, regard his loss as irreparable. The art of music has perhaps had no follower who in all respects was his equal. His impression upon his age was deep, and his work will not soon pass away. He died February 13, in Venice, where he was spending the winter. For some years he had been accustomed, as the season of cold came on, to seek the milder Italian climate.
May 22, 1813, in Leipsic, Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born, the youngest of seven children. His father was an actuary of police, and died a few months after the son’s birth. A step-father, Ludwig Geyer, a portrait painter, who had once been an actor and a writer of plays, probably helped in giving his mind a dramatic bent, but he also died when Richard was but seven years old. Wagner, in his autobiography, tells us that, though he early discovered a strong taste for music, he could never learn to play well on the piano. His teacher in boyhood declared that his making a player was quite out of the question, and the teacher was right. His playing was never good. He was sent to school to prepare for the regular university course; but here his time was largely spent in verse-making, in studying the Greek and other tragedies, and writing plays. He passed among his school fellows for one of bright mind, and he excelled in literary work. Before he had reached his twelfth year verses of his appeared in print. It was a memorable time with the boy when a translation of Shakspere’s works fell into his hands. His admiration for the great genius of English literature knew no bounds; he studied English that he might read the plays in the original. He became an earnest student of this master, and it was his delight to sit at his feet. One of his biographers, speaking of this boyhood period, says that “He projected an immense tragedy, which was a concoction of ‘Hamlet’ and ‘King Lear,’ on an absurdly grand scale. Forty-two men died in the earlier part of the play, and he was obliged to make a number of them return as ghosts, in order to keep the last acts sufficiently supplied with dramatis personæ.” Another event in his life was his first hearing at a concert one of Beethoven’s symphonies. The lad of fifteen was deeply moved, and a purpose to be a musician was awakened in his soul. His friends had no faith in his musical gifts, but finally allowed him to follow his inclination. He set to studying music at a furious rate, and to composing music. He studied for a time at the Thomas-schule at Leipsic, but in a desultory fashion at first, from which he derived little good. At length, however, he put himself under the instruction of Theodore Weinlig, cantor of this seminary,—a thoroughly competent teacher,—and laid an excellent foundation for his musical future. He became an adorer of Beethoven, as he had been—and continued ever to be—of Shakspere. “I doubt,” wrote one musical critic, “whether there ever was a young musician who knew Beethoven’s works more thoroughly than Wagner at his eighteenth year. The master’s overtures and larger instrumental compositions he had copied for himself in score. He went to sleep with the sonatas and rose with the quartettes; he sang the songs and whistled the concertos.”
The success of Wagner did not come speedily. He was forced to wait a long time for the world’s appreciation. There were years in which failure followed failure with him as a musical director and composer. He struggled long with poverty. He received his share of ridicule. But the time of his triumph came. His music has gone everywhere, and in these last years people from all quarters of the globe have flocked to the little Bavarian city where he had his home to listen to the productions of his genius as rendered by the world’s first artists. The coming of King Ludwig to the throne of Bavaria meant for Wagner his needed opportunity. The young king believed in him and took him under his protection. He could show the world at length the power that was in him. And the world has acknowledged it, and crowned him king in the realm of music. He founded a school; his theories were new and revolutionary. And his school has triumphed; his theories, as one has said, have “leavened the whole lump of European music.” His great name was sought to add to the glory of our American Centennial in 1876, and a portion of the music sung at the opening of the great exhibition in Philadelphia was from his pen. He was more than a musical composer. He was a matchless orchestral organizer and director. He was possessed of exquisite dramatic insight. He was a poet of genuine poetic gifts. He was a profound writer upon political and philosophical subjects. And his writings upon music and the drama have had a great influence. His literary works have been collected and published in an edition of nine volumes, and show in their author a strangely versatile genius. Some of his best known musical compositions are “Rienzi,” “Tannhäuser,” “Lohengrin,” “Tristan und Isolde,” “Die Meistersinger,” the four operas of the “Nibelungenring,” whose presentation enraptured thousands attended at Baireuth—among whom were different crowned heads of Europe—and “Parsifal” given last July at the same place with equal or greater success. Wagner lived in his last years at Baireuth in royal style. If fame, wealth, the homage of men could give man content, his lot should have been one of satisfaction. Personally, he was a man of strong will, of self-assertion, and of stubbornness—a man who could say of others things harsh and severe. Among his friends, however, he was amiable and often jolly. He was twice married. His first wife was not a congenial partner, and was divorced. His second was the daughter of the illustrious Liszt, and she survives him.