0 VENEZIA!
SIR,—II seems churlish to answer back so kind a reviewer as Mr. Christopher Sykes, but because I am quite childishly proud of my book Venice I cannot resist reassuring him that Wagner really did think the shepherd's horn in Tristan might have been suggested to him by the cries of gondoliers—notably that marvellous '0 Venezia!' which Mr. Sykes mentions, and which sums up the magic of Venice far better in two words than I have managed to in a hundred thousand. The impression of this cry and other gondoliers' calls, Wagner says in his autobiography, 'remained with me until the completion of the second act of Tristan, and possibly even suggested to me the long-drawn wail of the shepherd's horn at the beginning of the third act'.—Yours faithfully.
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