voice had often joined. He puts the poison aside and lends his thoughts to this new impulse—the faith of his early devotions is long since extinct, but their feelings are not quite forgotten, and their remembered thrill prevails over the attractions of death. The song is renewed and this long scene closes with it. In the next we find Mephistopheles. He does not come like the greater spirit in power and terror—as one who must be met in pride and strength, after having been sought by
By length of watching, strength of mind and skill
In knowledge of our fathers"—
For such are not the ministers of harm. It is the mean fiend who comes like a black dog to scrape acquaintance, who offers himself to be picked up in the street as if by accident, and to make cautious and gradual discovery of his real character. In such a disguise Mephistopheles finds admittance to the study of the recluse, and he makes use of the opportunity to disturb his meditations, which commence in a softer mood than any in which we have yet seen Faust. He is full of the feeling of his evening walk. He has seen the sun go down, and the influence of the "heavenliest hour of heaven" has not been lost even on his seared sympathies. He retains, though on the verge of his perdition, enough of his better nature to love a glorious sunset, to be solemnized by it, sobered, saddened, yet soothed and cheered. In such a mood he enters his retirement—he speaks as if he had forgotten that there was sorrow in the world.
As closes in the evening hour,
And with a soft yet boding thrill,
The soul awakes its holier power—
And each inordinate desire,
And each intemperate impulse dies,
As Charity's rekindling fire
And God's own love revive and rise.
He is interrupted here by the howlings of the poodle, to whom sentiments like these cannot fail to be unpalatable; but he stills him and goes on, paying that pole-star of the student, his lonely lamp, a tribute, which must find an echo in the bosom of every man who takes the true distinction between being alone and feeling solitary—between crowds and society—between noise and enjoyment.
