with the beautiful, and his sympathies have widened and become more humane. Experience has taught him that it is amidst realities alone that he can accomplish great things. He has learned the limits of the knowable. Everywhere has he found a barrier that shuts him out from further investigation. Everywhere the "Thus far, and no further" has obstructed his course, and he begins to look for a sphere of action within the limits of the possible. The boundless sea, with its imperious encroachments upon the shore, fixes his attention--it calls out the thought of Freedom and he dreams of lands freed from the thraldom of the sea-of free men, free institutions, and a name immortal in the hearts. of generations to come. It is with such great and noble aspirations, that he stands now before us, and we feel that the gold is separating from the dross in that great furnace of moral struggle and that the divine image is becoming more and more apparent. But a pair of seven-mile boots, hurrying after Faust, bring again Mephistopheles before us. Evil, if no longer his counselor, is still his agent, and we must expect to see a dark side to his future undertakings, be they ever so lofty. War is declared. The people have arisen against the Emperor, and a revolution has broken out. This indispensable element in the organization of the world seems at first sight forced into the picture, but, by closer observation, it is found to be a necessary appendage to complete the work; besides, it is to invest Faust with the means and power to execute his great scheme. In the opening of the fourth act, Mephistopheles brings him the news. The Emperor, whose empty coffers they had so ingeniously filled, followed the usual course of all mortals in possession of power and wealth. He abused his position, gratified all his whims and appetites, and a revolution is the conse quence. Two or three powerful touches were sufficient for the great poet to lay open to us the various elements of which war is composed. The three principles upon which it rests appear to us in their most picturesque embodiments. The braggadocio, the booty-seeker, and the lover of conquest. They represent the main springs of the infernal machinery, whilst Mischief directs the various modes that carry on the work of destruction. Not less truthful is the picture drawn of the consequences which a hard won victory carries with it. The innumerable resources of Mephistopheles insure the triumph. The struggle is nevertheless a hard one, for he fights, so to say, against himself; still the greater evil overcomes the lesser, and the good Emperor is reinstated in his domains; but at what cost! The great poet, in his profound knowledge of the world's seeming losses and benefits, has not forgotten to recall the ill results of a great victory, which, considering the many obligations the poor victor incurs towards his helping agencies-his menhis officers-his generals-his clergy even,-make the gained battle equal to a defeat. In the last act, Faust has begun the great work of benefiting mankind. His wide knowledge and vast experience are to promote henceforth the public good. The land is partially redeemed from the sea, and where the harbor once was, there may be now seen green fields and fruitful lands. Commerce, also, is represented, but under the hands of Mephistopheles it has almost degenerated into piracy. The first scene introduces a wanderer who revisits these shores after a long absence, and acquaints us partially with the great changes that have taken place. He is in search of an old couple-Philemon and Baucis, who live in a lindengrove in the rear of Faust's castle. They are pious people--hermitsbehind the progress of the age. They look with a suspicious eye upon the enterprises of the great stranger. But the good old times, however beautiful they may be in their virtuous simplicity and free hospitality, must yield to the powerful giant-Progress. Faust sees in the old couple a sort of opposition to his plans. The little bell of their chapel, telling of their devotions, is a daily annoyance to him. He will not bear with the customs and prejudices of the past, and is determined to drive them upon a broader and higher ground. He dispatches Mephistopheles and his three companions to the aged people, to induce them to exchange their old land for new. They refuse to open the door, and the hasty agents set fire to their hut and reduce the whole place to ashes. The young wanderer-Conservatism-in attempting to defend his kind hosts, is slain. Lynceus, from his tower, beholds the scene, and describes it with vivid picturesqueness; and Faust laments the injustice and barbarity of his two willing servants. He deplores the means that are to promote his object, but reform requires sacrifices, and he is ready to make any sacrifice to forward the great good he has in view. But "Life is short and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Four stern visitors announce themselves;-Guilt-WantAffliction-Death. He has known the first. Alas! who can cast a retrospective glance over his life and say he has not? Want-Affliction-they are the attendants of humanity; and all men, more or less, must go through their course of teachings, whether they profit by it or not. Affliction slides through the key-hole and gives Faust the first warning of old age. He becomes blind. On the verge of the grave the present moment is yet fair; he would fain hold it, and wrestle with it, until he obtains its blessing. How much there remains yet to be done! An unwholesome marsh that skirts the promising land must be drained in order to secure perfect salubrity and fertility, and he orders a graben (ditch) to be dug, to drain the stagnant waters. Oh! that fearful marsh of ignorance, prejudice, superstition, oppression, that lies in the way of progress, and generates those flitting will-o'-the-wisps which dazzle only to mislead! How many philanthropists, reformers, philosophers, have spent their lives in endeavoring to drain its foul waters. But life is short, the progress slow, and the engines employed are often inadequate to the stupendous work. Yet it advances steadily and in defiance of all obstacle. Every succeeding generation: takes the spade in hand, and the present is now rejoicing in. the golden dawn which is ushering in a sun that will shine benignly upon a land drained of its muddy impurities, and tilled by earnest and free hands. Faust's last moments are approaching. The ditch he ordered to be dug becomes his grave. He hears the sound of spades, but cannot see the fearful Lemuren that handle them. He stands before his last resting place, and there gives utterance to those great and noble thoughts that atone for a whole life of error, and give to the work of the poet a high æsthetic character. He dies: "Die Uhr steht still- Es ist vorbei!" Now follows the grand apotheosis which casts a halo around the whole picture. The poor, erring man is laid low; the combat of life is ended, he has paid his tribute to mortality; but the slumbering soul will vindicate its high origin, and though the evil powers by which it has been so long swayed may claim it as their own, it is finally rescued by its brother angels. A glorious sight breaks upon our view; the heavens open, and blessed spirits descend and hover over the open grave. They drop flowers on the dead body and sing to it a sweet requiem of hope and peace. Mephistopheles loses his prey. His dark agents, whom he has called to his aid, recoil before the holy troop, and the disputed soul is carried away in triumph to the celestial regions. There we are again reminded of the poet's own theory, of realizing or humanizing all things. He describes these realms above with such sensuous picturesqueness that they lose all that is strange or vague about them, and we are brought into perfect harmony with them. We are made to presuppose in the world above a reflection of this world, with similar degrees of superiority, and the work of perfection to go on ad infinitum. Thus we find in the earlier stages the beauties of nature repeated, only under a more etherialized form. Mountain gorges, silent valleys, rocky hights, lowly hermitages, where pious anchorites still announce their answering worship of the highest good. Then, through these endless solitudes, sweep troops of spirits-infant souls, snatched from the earth in midnight hours. They feel the life eternal only instinctively, and cannot as yet join the great body that sings the everlasting hymn of Love. But other troops are seen sailing toward the higher regions; they carry with them the newly-saved soul. Mary, the Mother of Grace, appears surrounded by a train of penitent and redeemed spirits, among whom Margaret looks eagerly for the coming of her former lover. Although the subject is grand and sublime, and fills the mind's eye with glory, its force is all subdued and kept down. Everything breathes of peace; there is nothing glaring in the picture; the poet has maintained a perfect mastery over his imagination. This great scene of Beatitude closes with the mystic chorus that in an oracular tone seems to gather up and concentrate within itself the whole object and spirit of the drama. The two last lines, especially, open in themselves a wide area for philosophic thought. It is by the purification and exaltation. of the Ewigweibliche, that is to say, the feminine, intuitive element of humanity, that it can hope to soar and reach the acme of possible development. “Alles Vergängliche Ist nur ein Gleichniss; [We could wish that the author of this Article had appended to this penetrating and genial interpretation of Goethe's idea, an equally felicitous exposure of the deadly fallacy that sin and crime inwrap the seeds of holiness; that selfrestoration, or restoration by the powers of nature, is a lawful hope for him who has delivered himself up to the powers of evil. When Shakespeare made Lady Macbeth ery: "Here's the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!"-he uttered a deeper and truer philosophy-a philosophy that falls in with the awful warning of Scripture"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" Isaiah v, 20.-ED. NEW ENGLANDER]. |