evil one, before her acquaintance with Faust extends beyond the casual meeting in the street. Though the rage of Mephistopheles at the loss of the casket may be affected to enhance the value of his gifts, it exhibits him in a miserably petty and contemptible point of view; Faust might well, in a previous scene, call him a "poor devil!" THE NEIGHBOUR'S HOUSE. The dialogue between Mephistopheles and Martha, in which he moves her to sorrow and anger, and raises her expectations only to disappoint them, by speaking of her husband's repentance, of his conduct, and his dying accusations, his suddenly acquired wealth, and his extravagance, closely resembles the scene between Tubal and Shylock in the Merchant of Venice, excepting that Tubal tortures the usurer unconsciously, while Mephistopheles does it purposely and only, it would seem, to gratify his malignity. The scene is very skilfully written. Martha's catalogue of her husband's only" faults, is rather amusing, as it includes all the worst and most destructive vices. FOREST AND CAVERN. On the con "The poet does not paint the scenes of sorcery and enchantment which should have followed the interview in the garden, and occupied the interval between that scene and the present. trary, he shows us Faust already satiated with his happiness. He begins also to feel with bitter sorrow the weight of the chain, by which he is united to such a being as Mephistopheles, who, skilful in tormenting, throws on him the keenist raillery. The sublime or generous emotions, which move the soul of his victim, he degrades beneath the most brutal instinct. It is a picture of Psyche tortured by demons; it is a terrible example of the celestial soul struggling with earthly passions. The most powerful image which the evil spirit employs to drive Faust to despair is the description of the sorrow into which he is plunging Margaret, though at the same time he inflames, with infernal address, the passion that is to prove the destruction of the unfortunate girl. In fact, Margaret believes she is already forgotten; alone in her chamber, she neglects her person and her occupations, and feeds upon the memory of the past, and the hope of the future."-Madame Voiart. Her mind on you for ever dreaming. "And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, She had no knowledge when the day was done, RECESS. The term rendered by the word "Recess," is Zwinger, a word which has caused much dispute as to its meaning. Retzsch's engraving of this scene renders it perfectly intelligible. It is a niche or recess in a wall adjoining the church, containing a statue of the Mater dolorosa. What may have been the origin of the word may be more difficult to decide. NIGHT.-BEFORE MARGARET'S DOOR. You cursed Ratcatcher! who art thou It is a common superstition in Germany, that some ratcatchers can charm the vermin to follow them by music; among the minor poems of Goethe is one called the Ratcatcher (Rattenfänger), founded on the same belief; it begins; "Ich bin der wohl bekannte Sänger Der vielgereis'te Rattenfänger;" It appears, however, that he can also charm prettier things than rats; "Und waren Mädchen noch so blöde Und waren Weiber noch so spröde; Bey Zaubersaiten und Gesang." WALPURGIS' NIGHT. The festival of the saint who converted the Saxon people to Christianity is held on the first of May. She was a female named Walpurgis, or more correctly perhaps, Valpurgis; in one collection of German Tales she is called Walburga. The range of the Hartz mountains has for ages been the "chosen seat" of superstition, and the legends connected with the various localities are of the wildest character. Science has recently laid its disenchanting hand on the "spectre of the Brocken;" it is now classed "in the dull catalogue of common things," and accounted for by reflection and refraction, or phenomena of that kind. The Blocksberg is the highest mountain of the range, and is supposed to be the spot on which all the witches, wizards, and "juggling fiends" of Germany hold a yearly gathering on the night of the first of May. How it came to be fixed on the festival of a saint is not explained. The Blocksberg, like the mountains or mountain ranges of other countries where Druidism prevailed, was the last strong-hold of the Druids, when the progress of Christianity was weakening their influence on the minds of the people. The performance of their rites among the wilds of the mountains was taken for the orgies of sorcerers by the peasantry. Goethe has written a poem on this tradition, called the "First Walpurgis Night," in which the Druids propose to cheat and scare the Christians "with the devil that they fable," by assuming hideous disguises, and approaching with fire and loud noise and outcries. Schirke and Elend are the names of two villages in the neighbourhood of the Brocken mountain. "The ruin of Margaret being completed, Mephistopheles thenceforth troubles himself no more about her, his end is accomplished; it is now the perdition of Faust that he seeks to consummate. To ensure the confusion of his soul, and to pervert his noblest impulses, he leads him to the Witch's Sabbath, held among the summits of the Hartz. The horrors and dangers of the path are increased around the wanderers by the darkness and the tempest of the night. The trees moan, shaken by the storm, their branches are shattered, the owls fly scared away,' the unchained winds roll the clouds in whirling masses, and in the midst of this disorder of nature, the whole length of the mountain-chain re-echoes with the magic song of the sorcerers who, from all parts, flock to the nocturnal orgie of Mammon."-Madame Voiart. Trees and rocks distorted grin. Throughout this scene the grotesque, the horrible, and the sublime, are mingled together; the idea in this line is not very intelligible, though I conclude it to mean that the rapidity with which objects are whirled past, gives them a distorted appearance, equivalent to the grin on a human countenance. Poets have often given human action to inanimate objects, with the happiest effect; thus Wordsworth says of trees in autumn, that they "In frenzied numbers tear The lingering remnant of their yellow hair.” The whirlwind's stress Bursts through the ever verdant palaces "A whirlwind roar'd Impetuous, warring with fierce elements; Which bursts the blustering forests, smites away Dante's Inferno, c. 9. As in a fearfully entangled fall. Shelley's translation of these two lines is equal, if not superior, the original, for the "stormy music" of their rhythm; "Over each other crack and crash they all In terrible and intertangled fall." The original is, "Im fürchterlich-verworrenen Falle It will be seen that Shelley has transposed them, putting the second line first, and has improved the effect of his translation by so doing. The rhymes being the same both in the German and the English, every translator would naturally use them, thus producing two lines generally resembling those of Shelley, but easily distinguished from his by their inferiority. The first translator of such a passage will probably render it the best, as his successors, not wishing to be thought copyists, will differ from him purposely, and in proportion as they differ will be inferior. Over Ilsenstein's crest. Ilsenstein is the name of a rock in the Brocken. From Felsensee. "From the lake of the rocks ;" like Ilsenstein, it is the name of a spot in the neighbourhood. Place! Squire Voland comes ! Squire Voland is one of the names of the devil in German legendary lore. 'Tis Lilith! Lilith is a formidable spectre, said by Jewish superstition to watch for and kill children, like the Striges and Lamia of the Romans; "Pranse Lamiæ vivum puerum extrahat alvo."-Horace. "The Talmudists say that Adam had a wife, called Lilis, before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils."-Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. I in it saw a rifted tree. The lines, the absence of which is marked with stars, are left imperfect in the original; from what is given of them a meaning might be supplied, but as they are not worth translating, I have not attempted it. The same liberty is taken a little farther on in a speech of Mephistopheles, of which four lines are omitted; they are very obscure and very coarse, and may be spared by the reader without regret. Proctophantasmist. Mr. Hayward states that the individual meant by this personage, is Nicolai of Berlin, a writer who for nearly twenty years had, by his criticisms in a periodical, which he partly conducted, a con P siderable influence on German Literature. They were written in a cold prosaic spirit, and he had frequent disputes with the writers of the time, among them Wieland and Goethe. Tegel. Tegel is a little place some ten miles from Berlin, where, in the year 1799, an affair occurred something like that of our own Cock. lane Ghost, which terrified the people of Berlin notwithstanding their enlightenment by such writers as Nicolai. Mr. Hayward gives a long note on this affair, and on Nicolai himself. Mephisto? seest thou there Lone and far off that figure pale and fair? Amid the wild and grotesque enchantments of the Witch's Kitchen, Faust is captivated by the visionary form of a beautiful woman; in the unearthly revelry of the Witches' Sabbath, he is roused from the delusions of the scene by another apparition, beautiful still, but how unlike the form which he saw in the magic mirror! This is invested with the fascination of horror, as the first was with the attractions of grace. From the eagerness shown by Mephistopheles to avert his gaze and attention from it, it does not seem to have been conjured up by the Evil One, but rather to be sent by a better power to recall the mind of Faust to the victim of his passions, whom the intoxications of sorcery had made him for awhile forget, and whom it is not the wish of Mephistopheles that he should remember. The warning is effectual; the unholy tumult of the infernal revel appears to have no more attractions for him, for the scene abruptly closes, and his inquiries probably force from the tempter the intelligence that produces the terrible scene of denunciation and hatred which follows the intermezzo. The eyes she gazes with are those Of a dead corse. "Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold, There is no speculation in those eyes That thou dost glare with."-Macbeth. How wondrously the fairness of her neck That single, narrow, crimson line doth deck The apparitions of persons who have been beheaded are supposed to appear with this token of the manner of their death. So in Southey's Colloquies he thus introduces his shadowy interlocutor; "Is it Sir Thomas More ?-The same, he made answer, and lifting up his chin, displayed a circle round his neck, brighter in colour than the ruby. The marks of martyrdom, continued he, are our |