eaden his sensibility, destroy his conscience, and harden him
in evil the Fiend leads him into a mad revel of boundless profligacy and
bestial riot--denoted by the beautiful and terrible scene upon the
Brocken--and poor Margaret is abandoned to her shame, her wandering, her
despair, her frenzy, her crime, and her punishment. This desertion,
though, is procured by a stratagem of the Fiend and does not proceed
from the design of her lover. The expedient of Mephistopheles, to lull
his prey by dissipations, is a failure. Faust finds them "tasteless,"
and he must return to Margaret. He finds her in prison, crazed and
dying, and he strives in vain to set her free. There is a climax,
whereat, while her soul is borne upward by angels he--whose destiny must
yet be fulfilled--is summoned by the terrible voice of Satan. This is
the substance of what is shown; but if the gaze of the observer pierces
beyond this, if he is able to comprehend that terrific but woeful image
of the fallen angel, if he perceives what is by no means obscurely
intimated, that Margaret, redeemed and beatified, cannot be happy unless
her lover also is saved, and that the soul of Faust can only be lost
through the impossible contingency of being converted into the likeness
of the Fiend, he will understand that a spectacle has been set before
him more august, momentous, and sublime than any episode of tragical
human love could ever be.

Henry Irving, in his embodiment of Mephistopheles, fulfilled the
conception of the poet in one essential respect and transcended it in
another. His performance, superb in ideal and perfect in execution, was
a great work--and precisely here was the greatness of it. Mephistopheles
as delineated by Goethe is magnificently intellectual and sardonic, but
nowhere does he convey even a faint suggestion of the god-head of glory
from which he has lapsed. His own frank and clear avowal of himself
leaves no room for doubt as to the limitation intended to be established
for him by the poet. I am, he declares, the spirit that perpetually
denies. I am a part of that part which once was all--a part of that
darkness out of which came the light. I repudiate all things--because
everything that has been made is unworthy to exist and ought to be
destroyed, and therefore it is better that nothing should ever have been
made. God dwells in splendour, alone and eternal, but his spirits he
thrusts into darkness, and man, a poor creature fashioned to pok