element—the sense of the Beautiful in the human mind—is introduced as a most important agent of human culture, gradually refining and purifying Faust’s nature, and lifting it forever above all the meanness and littleness of the world. Mephistopheles is bound by his compact to serve, even in fulfilling this aspiration which he cannot comprehend; but he obeys unwillingly, and with continual attempts to regain his diminishing power. After the apparition of Helena, and Faust’s rash attempt to possess at once the Ideal of the Beautiful, the scene changes to the latter’s old Gothic chamber, where we meet the Student of the First Part as a Baccalaureus, and find Wagner, in his laboratory, engaged in creating a Homunculus. This whimsical sprite guides Faust and Mephistopheles to the Classical Walpurgis-Night, where the former continues his pilgrimage towards Helena (the Beautiful), while the latter, true to his negative character, finally reaches his ideal of Ugliness in the Phorkyads. The allegory of the Classical Walpurgis-Night is also difficult to be unravelled, but it is not simply didactic, like that of the Carnival Masquerade. A purer strain of poetry breathes through it, and the magical moonlight which shines upon its closing Festals of the Sea prepares us for the sunbright atmosphere of the Helena.
This interlude, occupying the Third Act, is another allegory, complete in itself, and only lightly attached to the course of the drama. While it
