to 'higher spheres'; and amidst the fierce and insidious
assaults of flesh and devil we shall see that he looks for strength and
guidance to this Spirit that appeared to him in the blinding vision of
living empyreal flame.

Scarcely has the Earth-spirit vanished when, with a timid knock, there
enters Faust's _famulus_, or assistant, Wagner. He has heard Faust's
voice and from its excited tones has concluded that he is practising
declamation--reciting perhaps a Greek play. The poor amiable dryasdust
literary and scientific worm-grubber, whose maxim of life is _Zwar weiss
ich viel, doch moecht' ich Alles wissen_ (I know indeed a good deal, but
I want to know _Everything_), wishes to profit from a lesson in
elocution. A scene follows in which the contrast is graphically depicted
between this half lovable, half contemptible scientific bookworm and
Faust's Titanic heaven-storming aspirations after absolute truth. When
he is once more left alone, longing to face the mystery of life but
crushed by the contempt of the Earth-spirit, Faust is seized by despair.
He shrinks from encountering life, with its delusive joys, its pitiless
injustice and its arbitrary fate. He resolves to seek certainty--to
solve the riddle of life by death. As he moves the cup of poison to his
lips there comes floating through the air the chime of bells and,
perhaps from some near chapel, the hymn of Easter morn:

Joy unto mortals! Christ is arisen!

He pauses. Memories of childhood sweep over him, and he yields to the
sweet voices that call him back from the threshold of the unseen.

Sound on sweet hymns of heaven! As gentle rain
My tears are falling. Earth hath me again.

Thus Faust escapes the cowardly act of suicide and gains new strength
through the awakening, for a time at least, of the consciousness, which
had slumbered within him since the unreasoning days of childhood, that
there is that beyond life which alone makes life worth having.

The next scene shows us Faust already in contact with human nature, as
represented by holiday crowds flocking out of the town into the woods
and adjacent villages at Eastertide. Those who know Germany well will
feel the art with which Goethe at once transports us into the midst of a
Germanic Feiertag in spring-time, with its bright sunlight, its throngs
of townspeople streaming into the country--happy and merry without
vulgar rowdyism; the smugly dressed apprentice and the servant-girl in
her S