He constantly sought to direct public attention to the grander and nobler compositions, such as Gluck's "Armide" and "Iphigenia in Aulis," Weber's "Euryanthe" and "Freischuetz," Marschner's "Hans Heiling," Spohr's "Jessonda," and other grand works for concerts, like Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" and Bach's "Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied," all of which were performed in a masterly manner, while such compositions as Spontini's "Vestalin" he at least helped to display in the best light. He was also very active in having Weber's remains brought from London. He not only composed a funeral march, for the obsequies, upon motives from "Euryanthe," which was very powerful in effect, but he also has reminded posterity of what it possesses in this the youngest German master of the musical stage. "No musician, more thoroughly German than thou, has ever lived," he said at the grave. "See, now the Briton does thee justice, the Frenchman admires thee, but the German alone can love thee. Thou art his, a beautiful day in his life, a warm drop of his blood, a part of his heart." Thus at times he succeeded in arousing the public. But on the whole, his ideas were not accepted, and it retained its accustomed views and continued in the old pleasures. Wagner began again to feel more and more his isolated position. The complete misunderstanding of Tannhaeuser, which he began to write when he first arrived in Dresden, and the refusals of the work by other cities, Berlin among them, declaring it "too epic," rendered this sense of isolation complete. The recurrence of such experiences as these showed him how far his art was still removed from its ideal and his contemporaries from the comprehension of their own resources. He realized the fact that his own improved circumstances had deceived him, and that in truth the same superficiality of life and degradation of the stage prevailed everywhere. The course of events during the next generation but proved the truth of this. Whatever of merit was produced met with hostility, as in the case of our artist. The growing perception of these facts led him gradually to revolt against the art-circumstances of his time, and as he became convinced that the condition of art was but the result of the social and political, indeed of the existing mental condition of the people, he at last broke out into open revolution against the entire system. This very agitation of soul, however, became the source of his artistic creations, wherein he attempted to disclose grander ideals and nobler art, and they form therefore, as in the case of every real artist, his own genuine biography. In tracing the origin of his works, we follow the inner current of his life.