It was the spring of 1842, and it was also the rapid and wondrous turn of the tide for WAGNER. He hurried to Dresden, to find the rehearsals of Rienzi already advanced. The opera was produced with that singular burst of enthusiasm which greets the first appreciation of an important but long-neglected truth, and WAGNER, having become the favourite of the Crown Prince, was elected Kapellmeister at Dresden, and found himself for the first time famous. Some might now have rested on their laurels, but to WAGNER'S imperious development Rienzi was already a thing of the past.