vey for the existing European public. They direct him on the whole right; though, as we are admitted to see, not knowing really what they say. Speaking merely as men of the world, they tell him he must come down from his dreams and visions; something solid, strong, practical is wanted to go down in times like these; common life-the common life that common people lead, he is to take a good picture of this; hold up a looking-glass to the world, and let it see itself. If the opportunity can be taken to throw in a dash of instruction, all the better.

In strange, awful contrast to this very common scene, we pass abruptly into the open court of Heaven, and listen to the choral hymn of the archangels before the throne of the Eternal. It is a not uncommon objection brought against Faust, that so little comes out of such vast machinery; something grander surely ought to be expected from a written compact with the power of darkness than a mere village tale of seduction. Whether it ought or not abstractedly, it certainly ought not from Goethe, for to teach the extraordinariness of the ordinary everyday life, one might say is the whole object of all he ever wrote or said; the infinitely pregnant meaning that underlies the meanest action of the meanest man. Accordingly, he has not scrupled to avail himself of the entire gigantic machinery of the Mystery plays of the middle ages to array this so simple story in the darkness and terror of the most tremendous tragedy. You want a picture of common life. First, then, let us see what this common life is; let us begin with having a strong impression of what it is stamped upon us, so that we shall not forget it; and the everlasting doors of heaven are flung back, and something of this mystery shall be unfolded to us. The prologue is too long to extract entire, and we cannot venture to mutilate it. It is enough that the evil spirit appears before the throne of God, and asks and obtains permission to exhaust his malice so long as he shall live on the person of Faust, of whom thus much is told us, that he is an unsatisfied seeker after truth and goodness, perplexed and in darkness, because he serves in a perplexing scene, but with his 'will' in the right place still; and we have this comforting hope (only a hope, but still a hope) held out to us, that the tempter, however he may seem to succeed, will in the end. fail, and baffled and in shame be forced to admit that a good man, clouded though his senses be by error, is no willing slave to it. The language of Mephistopheles is shocking enough. He would not be the evil spirit if he could speak otherwise. But people say is so shocking. He is the truer devil; he has nothing of the archangel fallen; not one ray of trailing glory about him; there is nothing in which people can sympathize, and so they are offended; as if it were necessary to make evil in a way attractive before

he

they can get up the proper kind of loving hate they like to feel for it. The preternatural machinery of Faust, we must never forget, is machinery only. He, that individual Faust, is not to be supposed to be introduced into a new element, a new sort of influence different from what surrounds the rest of mankind; if it were so he would be beyond our sympathy, and could serve only for a beautiful image containing neither example nor instruction. The forms that appear to Faust are about and in every one of us, only in his case the figure assumes a definite outline, by being brought as it were into focus; as he is in his own naked essence, the evil spirit is not and cannot be painted, (for who can know what he is,) but as he is to us; Mephistopheles is the devil of this age of intellect, and as such, if he speak at all he must speak in heaven. Many people are shocked at him who can manage a throb of admiration for Milton's Satan or Byron's Lucifer; the gloomy magnificence of the defeated and defying rebel has claims on their regard; at any rate, they can feel for him, and would not much mind purchasing a share of his grandeur with the sacrifice of a little of their own mean uninteresting goodness, provided they could be sure of their bargain; which seems to show that they are angry at Goëthe for spoiling their imagination and destroying their idol; and perhaps it would be better if, instead of throwing stones at him, they would submit to learn a little from him what this evil really is.

Mephistopheles speaks as the cool, polished, gentlemanlike, scientific disbeliever in the very existence of anything good, or true, or holy; he is a scoffer, who contents himself with denying, and does deny and does disbelieve even in the very presence of the Supreme object of all belief. Perfectly cool and perfectly contented, there is no heroism, no scorn, no defiance about him, to show that in his heart he believes what he professes to abjure. But we are wasting words in explaining what is itself its best explanation and surest apology; and we will pass on to the high arched narrow Gothic chamber, where, amidst a profusion of old books, papers, parchments, instruments, glasses, cylinders, retorts, skeletons, and all the furniture of the laboratory, is sitting the restless, unhappy object of this strange conference. It is Easter even, and the full moon is streaming in through the stained casement, on his head.

'I have explored

Philosophy, and law, and medicine;
Alas! and o'er theology have pored.
And here I am at last, a very fool,
With useless learning cursed.'

He, the boast and wonder of the school, the lawgiver of opi

nion, winding all hearts and thoughts which way he will; he,
with all his knowings and learnings, finds at last that he has
learnt nothing but that nothing can be known. He has been
more acute than all their doctors, their philosophic theologians;
he has probed the depths of every science; neither scruple, nor
perplexities, he thinks, torment him, nor fear of hell and devil.
• But I have lost all peace of mind.
Whate'er I knew, or thought I knew,
Seems now unmeaning and untrue.
Unhappy, ignorant and blind,

I cannot hope to teach mankind.
Thus robbed of learning's only pleasure,
Without dominion, rank or treasure,
Without one joy that earth can give,
Could dog, were I a dog, so live.'

What by lawful means he cannot wring out of nature, he he will try if he cannot get at by unlawful, and therefore he has given himself to magic. Alas! what need has he of such strange instructors; is not the full calm moon chiding his restless spirit into peace with her sweet and melancholy smile. I think,' writes a very wise critic on this poem, 'it was one of the noblest conceptions that ever entered into the mind of a poet, which made Goëthe open his Faustus with a scene of moonlight.' The restlessness of an intellect wearied with the vanity of knowledge and tormented with the sleepless agonies of doubt; the sickness of a heart bruised and buffeted by all the demons of presumption, the wild and wandering throbs of a soul parched among plenty by the blind cruelty of its own dead affections; these dark and depressing mysteries all maddening in the brain of the hermit student, might have suggested other accompaniments to one who had looked less deeply into the nature of man, who had felt less in his own person of that which he might have been ambitious to describe. But this great master of the intellect was well aware to what thoughts and feelings the perplexed and bewildered are most anxious to return; he well knew where it is that nature has placed the only balm for the wounds of the spirit; by what indissoluble links she has twined her own eternal influence around the dry, chafed heartstrings that have most neglected her tenderness. thus in his weary melancholy Faustus speaks:—

· Beautiful moon-ah! would that now

For the last time, thy lovely beams
Shone on my troubled brow!
Oft by this desk, at middle night,
I have sat gazing for thy light,

It is

Wearied with search through volumes endless,
'Mongst parchments, papers, crowded books,
Alone, when thou, friend of the friendless,
Camest smiling in with soothing looks-
Oh! that upon some headland height
I now were wandering in thy light;
Floating, with spirits like a shadow,

Round mountain cave-o'er twilight meadow;
And from the toil of thought relieved,
No longer sickened and deceived,

In thy soft dew could bathe, and find
Tranquillity and health of mind.'

But no! this may not be. He is still in the dungeon of his student chamber, he has wilfully cut himself off from nature's teaching and sought his instructors elsewhere; he has fled from living nature to pore over the skeleton of the departed, and the hollow spectre has at last gathered life enough to tell him that it is dead and shall never live again. Nature speaks to him, but the long forgotten tone makes mournful music in his ear; enough to be but the dirge of the departed. Magic must help him now, or he is past helping; yet will the voice from the other world be any more clear to him?

He opens the book, and lights on the sign of Macrocosmos, the Spirit of the Universe, the great Anima Mundi weaving into everlasting harmony the endless discord of its parts.

'Ha! what new life divine, intense,
Floods in a moment every sense!

Am I a god-can mortal sight
Enjoy, endure, this burst of light;
All nature present to my view.
And is the glorious vision true?
The wise man's words at length are plain,
Whose sense so long I sought in vain.

The world of spirits no clouds conceal;
Man's eye is dim, it cannot see;

Man's heart is dead, it cannot feel.

Thou who wouldst know the things that be,
Bathe thy heart in the sunrise red

Till the stains of earthly dross are fled.'

He looks over the sign attentively. Nature's hidden ways appear to start out and unrobe themselves to him; all things for ever blending into each other, interweaving their wondrous fibres.

Rising, sinking, and receiving

Each from each, while each is giving
On to each, and each relieving
Each, the pails of gold, the living
Current through the air is heaving.
Alas! it is but a vision.

Oh what a vision—but a vision-only!'

Glad enough would be the seared, jaded heart of man to rest in that glorious presence: but it is not to be so; the harmony of the great Universe may be felt by spirits that are themselves in harmony, not by fallen man.

Poor Σοφία, the exile from the πληρῶμα, all infected as she was by passion, struggled up to the guarded door of heaven, and was driven sternly back by the inexorable gos. She could but weep a few tears of pearl, and leave them there the offering of her sorrow, and go back and generate a world of light and darkness, and joy and sorrow, where the clouds are her robe of mourning; and the sunshine her happy smiles, when she thinks of the undying glories of her lost home.

The heart of man cannot embrace illimitable nature. The solace he seeks for, the Great Spirit may not impart; the food he hungers for it will not give.

Faust turns over the leaves of the book impatiently, till his eye rests on the sign of the spirit of the earth. Of heaven he asked its highest stars, and heaven has refused him. Earth then shall yield him hers.

Here he has found a spirit kindred with his own.