intellect and of artistic ability, if everybody were to be merged in the working classes, he met my objection by replying, that owing to the very fact that everybody would participate in the necessary labour according to his strength and capacity, work would cease to be a burden, and would become simply an occupation which would finally assume an entirely artistic character.  He demonstrated this on the principle that, as had already been proved, a field, worked laboriously by a single peasant, was infinitely less productive than when cultivated by several persons in a scientific way.  These and similar suggestions, which Rockel communicated to me with a really delightful enthusiasm, led me to further reflections, and gave birth to new plans upon which, to my mind, a possible organisation of the human race, which would correspond to my highest ideals in art, could alone be based.  In reference to this, I immediately turned my thoughts to what was close at hand, and directed my attention to the theatre.  The motive for this came not only from my own feelings, but also from external circumstances.  In accordance with the latest democratic suffrage laws, a general election seemed imminent in Saxony; the election of extreme radicals, which had now taken place nearly everywhere else, showed us that if the movement lasted, there would be the most extraordinary changes even in the administration of the revenue.  Apparently a general resolution had been passed to subject the Civil List to a strict revision; all that was deemed superfluous in the royal household was to be done away with; the theatre, as an unnecessary place of entertainment for a depraved portion of the public, was threatened with the withdrawal of the subsidy granted it from the Civil List.  I now resolved, in view of the importance which I attached to the theatre, to suggest to the ministers that they should inform the members of parliament, that if the theatre in its present condition were not worth any sacrifice from the state, it would sink to still more doubtful tendencies—­and might even become dangerous to public morals—­if deprived of that state control which had for its aim the ideal, and, at the same time, felt itself called upon to place culture and education under its beneficial protection.  It was of the highest importance to me to secure an organisation of the theatre, which would make the carrying out its loftiest ideals not only a possibility but also a certainty.  Accordingly I drew up a project by which the same sum as that which was allotted from the Civil List for the support of a court theatre should be employed for the foundation and upkeep of a national theatre for the kingdom of Saxony.  In showing the practical nature of the well-planned particulars of my scheme, I defined them with such great precision, that I felt assured my work would serve as a useful guide to the ministers as to how they should put this matter before parliament.  The point now was to have a personal interview with