Stories from Wagner. By J. Walker DIcSpadden. (George G. Harrap
and Co. 2s. 6d. net.)—Mr. MeSpadden's volume of Stories from Wagner makes an admirable and very welcome addition. to the literature of the nursery and the schoolroom. Told simply, so as to reach the hearts and the intelligences of the young, this set of old-world legends come out with a new distinctness which greatly enhances their moral and spiritual significance. Full scope is allowed to the elements of heroic adventure and mundane strife and ambition which the Wagner myths have in common with the other folk-lore tales of the entire world; but as one reads these stories all together in the simple form here given to them it is impossible not to be struck by the preponderating importance of the fine conclusions in which sin and defeat and failure are swallowed up in the victory beyond death,—the curse of the Ring wiped out in the reconcilia- tion of Brynhild and Siegfried, the forgiveness of Amfortas by Paraifal the Pure, the magnanimity of Lohengrin, the final redemption of Tannhituser, and the constancy of Tristan and Isolde.
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