nd chatter a weird medley of half
sense, half nonsense, in which one can dimly discern satirical allusions
to various forms of the literary, political, and religious cant of
Goethe's generation.

The animals enthrone Mephistopheles in a chair, give him a feather brush
for a sceptre, and offer him a broken crown, which he is to glue
together with 'sweat and blood.' It is like some horrid nightmare. We
feel as if we were going mad; and so does Faust himself. But suddenly he
catches sight of a magic mirror, in which he sees a form of ravishing
beauty--not that of Gretchen or Helen, but some form of ideal
loveliness. He stands there entranced.

But at this moment the cauldron boils over. A great flame shoots up the
chimney. With a scream the witch comes clattering down, and launches
curses at the intruders--not recognising the devil in his costume as
modern roue. He abuses her roundly and tells her that his horns, tail
and cloven hoof are gone out of fashion, modern culture having tabooed
them; and he forbids her to address him as Satan. That name is not
up-to-date: he is now 'der Herr Baron.'

With a hocus-pocus of incantations she brews the magic draught, which
Faust drinks. He is then hurried away by Mephistopheles back into the
world of humanity.

We have now come to the story of Margarete or Gretchen, which by many,
perhaps by most, is looked upon as constituting the main subject of
Goethe's _Faust_. It is doubtless the part which attracts one, which
appeals to one's _heart_, more than any other, and it forms by itself a
pathetic little tragedy. The story itself is merely the old sad story of
passion, weakness and misery, which has been told thousands of times in
all ages and all languages.

It would be worse than useless to endeavour by any dissecting process to
discover how by some act of creative power Goethe has inspired this
little story with such wondrous vitality that there is probably in all
literature scarcely any character that lives for us, that seems so real,
as Gretchen. Possibly to feel this one needs a knowledge of the original
poem and an acquaintance not only with that Germany which is generally
known to the English visitor, but also with just that class of which
Gretchen is typical, and with just those little ways and those forms of
expression which are peculiar to that class and to the part of Germany
to which Gretchen belonged. Every single word that she utters is so
absolutely true to nature