[97] Monks of the West, Introduction, last paragraph.
LIMITATION.
Through limit and hindrance man works: no limit hath God, and no need;
But his wind is musical only when prisoned in the cane of the reed.
Aubrey de Vere.
MODERN OPERA.[98]
Nothing better pictures an epoch than the art and literature which it produces. The great characters, religious and political, immortalized by history, have always been surrounded by a cluster of noble geniuses, artistic and literary. The generosity and magnanimity of heroes is reproduced in the sublime purity of the works of art of their epoch. Nobility of art bears testimony to the excellence of morals. Our century is no exception to this. Confusion of principles in politics and religion is accompanied by an analogous overturning of morals, of art, and of literature. We are living in a time of general depravity; at least, it is so as regards those who pretend to march at the head of modern civilization. But their depraved literature, their shameless arts, exercise their disastrous influence over those who would wish to resist the current of the bad passions of the day. It is to them that M. Stein gives warning of the danger, in depicting the bad conditions into which dramatic music has degenerated. It is a study of contemporaneous manners, not so much from an artistic as from a religious and political point of view.