magic powers of the number three, and of the blind working of mysterious triangles and pentagrams, are preserved entire. Faust sells his soul on the usual terms, and there is nothing very singular either in his reasons for doing so—he has consumed the resources of life—he has found that all wisdom is sorrow and much study weariness—his familiarity with pleasure has extended to disgust—his familiarity with science to contempt, and his imagination can conceive no happiness in such a world, even though its wildest flights within the bounds of nature could be realized. He pours forth curses upon his existence, and in the deep feeling of the nothingness or inanity of the past and of the present, he finds an argument to despise or doubt the future, and by questioning its reality, justifies his recklessness as to any retribution he may heap upon it. Mephistopheles avails himself with the skill, peculiar to his tribe, of these favourable dispositions of the doctor. He gets leave first to tempt him, in a scene in heaven like that in Job, when he appears however as a wag only—a lover of fun and mischief—a scoffer, but not a fiendish destroyer; but in the end he turns out very evil disposed, even for a devil, delighting not merely in freaks and dilemmas, but in inflicting bitter anguish and in mocking it. Every one remembers the passage in Sterne in the theological arguments between Dr. Slop and my Uncle Toby. But the devil, says Dr. Slop, is damned to all eternity. I am very sorry for it, says my Uncle Toby. Whe-e-e-eugh, says Dr. Slop. My Uncle Toby's goodness of heart in this passage is most excellent, and until I read Faust I always thought with him; but if he should extend his pity to Mephistopheles, I should rather cry Whe-e-e-eugh with Dr. Slop.
Between Faust and the devil it is all fair play. One grudges the old monopolizer his purchase of another eternal jewel certainly, but the doctor makes out his case so clearly, that the best thing he can do is to sell, that we yield to the conviction, and however we may disapprove the transaction, we do not feel that we could have prevented it, or opposed it to any purpose had we been there. Fight dog fight bear, it is the proverb's justice, and a man full of years and experience who has been hacknied, jostled, blasé, through a long life, may lay the blame on his own capacity if he does not become toward the end of it a pretty fair match for a fiend. But Margaret, poor Margaret, how different is all this with her—she is painted so lovely, so confiding, so
