him towards her, presses upon his lips the first kiss of love.  The touch of defilement wakens him to a sense of human frailty.  The wounded Amfortas’s cry becomes plain to him.  He starts to his feet, throbbing with compassion for a world of sin.  No thought of sensual pleasure moves him.  He puts Kundry from him, and her endearments move him but to pity and horror.  Kundry in her discomfiture cries to Klingsor.  He appears on the castle steps, brandishing the sacred spear.  He hurls it at Parsifal, but it stops in the air over the boy’s head.  He seizes it and with it makes the sacred sign of the Cross.  With a crash the enchanted garden and castle fall into ruin.  The ground is strewn with withered flowers, among which Kundry lies prostrate, and all that a moment before was bright with exotic beauty now lies a bare and desert waste.

Many years have passed before the third act opens.  Evil days have fallen upon the brotherhood of the Grail.  Amfortas, in his craving for the release of death, has ceased to uncover the Grail.  Robbed of their miraculous nourishment, the knights are sunk in dejection.  Titurel is dead, and Gurnemanz dwells in a little hermitage in a remote part of the Grail domain.  There one morning he finds the body of Kundry cold and stiff.  He chafes her to life once more, and is surprised to see in her face and gestures a new and strange humility.  A warrior now approaches clad in black armour.  It is Parsifal returned at length after long and weary wanderings.  Gurnemanz recognises the spear which he carries, and salutes its bearer as the new guardian of the Grail.  He pours water from the sacred spring upon Parsifal’s head, saluting him in token of anointment, while Kundry washes his feet and wipes them with her hair.  The first act of Parsifal in his new office is to baptize the regenerate Kundry, redeemed at length by love from her perpetual curse.  Bowing her head upon the earth, she weeps tears of repentant joy.  The three now proceed to the temple, where the knights are gathered for Titurel’s burial.  Amfortas still obstinately refuses to uncover the Grail, and calls upon the knights to slay him.  Parsifal heals his wound with a touch of the sacred spear, and taking his place, unveils the sacred chalice, and kneels before it in silent prayer.  Once more a sacred glow illumines the Grail, and while Parsifal gently waves the mystic cup from side to side, in token of benediction alike to the pardoned Amfortas and the ransomed Kundry, a snowy dove flies down from above, and hovers over his anointed head.

It would be in vain to attempt to treat, within the restricted limits of these pages, of the manifold beauties of ‘Parsifal,’ musical, poetical, and scenical.  Many books have already been devoted to it alone, and to these the reader must be referred for a subtler analysis of this extraordinary work.  It is difficult to compare ‘Parsifal’ with any of Wagner’s previous works.  By reason of its subject it stands apart, and performed as it