The event of 1876 was, I suppose, unprecedented in the annals of Modern Art. I have devoted to it a separate notice. It was my privilege to witness the first unfolding of those four colossal musical dramas of the Nibelung's Ring on the Bayreuth stage. People had assembled from all parts of the civilised world; kings, princes, and nobles mingled in that motley throng. The dramas lasted every day from four till ten, with intervals of an hour between the acts. The whole population lived only in the life of that great cycle of tragedies in which gods, demi-gods, and mortals acted out, with more than earthly intensity, the perennially interesting dramas of human life and passion.