catholic, the burden of the
ballad showing that the tragic event lies between Hell and Heaven:--

(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)

But the superstructural overgrowth is totally undisturbed by any
animosity against heresy, and is concerned only with a certain ultimate
demoniacal justice visiting the wrongdoer. Thus far the elemental tissue
of the superstition has something in common with that of the German
secret tribunal of the steel and cord; with this difference, however,
that whereas the latter punishes in secret, even _as the deity_, the
former makes conscious compact with the powers of evil, that whatever
justice shall be administered upon the wicked shall first be purchased
by sacrifice of the good. Sister Helen may burn, alive, the body and
soul of her betrayer, but the dying knell that tells of the false soul's
untimely flight, tolls the loss of her own soul also:--

"Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
Sister Helen?
Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost!"
"A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

Here lies the divergence between the lines of this and other compacts
with evil powers; this is the point of Rossetti's departure from the
scheme that forms the underplot of Goethe's _Faust_, and of Marlowe's
_Faustus_, and was intended to constitute the plan of Coleridge's
_Michael Scott_. It has been well said that the theme of the Faust is
the consequence of a misology, or hatred of knowledge, resulting upon
an original thirst for knowledge baffled. Faust never does from the
beginning love knowledge for itself, but he loves it for the means it
affords for the acquisition of power. This base purpose defeats itself;
and when Faust finds that learning fails to yield him the domination he
craves, he hates and contemns it. Away, henceforth, with all pretence to
knowledge! Then follows the compact, the articles to which are absolute
servility of the Devil on the one part, and complete possession of the
soul of Faust on the other. Faust is little better than a wizard from
the first, for if knowledge had given him what he: sought, he had never
had recourse to witchcraft! Helen, however, partakes in some sort
of the triumphant nobility of an avenging deity who has cozened hell
itself, and not in vain. In