temptations so cunningly
set before him by the Father of Lies, three widely-spread metaphysical
systems are shadowed forth: the ideal or poetic; the pantheistic; and
the anthropotheistic (Comte's), which deifies man. The vast symbolism of
this original drama is especially recommended to the attention of the
critic.

Abiding by the counsel of the Angel, our hero marries, thus involving
another in his fate. He makes a solemn vow to be faithful, in the
keeping of which vow he takes upon himself the responsibility of the
happiness of one of God's creatures, a pure and trusting woman, who
loves him well. A husband and a father, he breaks his oath. Tempted by
the phantom of a long-lost love, the Ideal under the form of a 'Maiden,'
he deserts the real duties he has assumed to pursue this Ideal,
personated indeed by Lucifer himself, and which becomes--true and
fearful lesson for those who seek the infinite in the human!--a
loathsome skeleton as soon as grasped. From the false and disappointing
search into which he had been enticed by the demon, he returns to find
the innocent wife, whom he had deserted, in a madhouse. False to human
duties, his punishment came fast upon the heels of crime.

In the scene which occurs in Bedlam we find the key which admits us to
much of the symbolism of this drama. We are conducted into the madhouse
to visit the broken-hearted wife, and are there introduced into our
still-existing society, formal, monotonous, cold, and about to be
dissolved. Our hero had himself married the Past, a good and devout
woman, but not the realization of his poetic dreams, which nothing
could have satisfied save the infinite. In the midst of this scene of
strange suffering, we hear the cries of the Future, and all is terror
and tumult. This Future, with its turbulence, blood, and demonism, is
represented as existing in its germs among the maniacs. Like the springs
of a volcanic mountain, which are always disturbed before an eruption of
fire, their cries break upon us; the broken words and shrill shrieks of
the madmen are the clouds of murky smoke which burst from the explosive
craters before the lava pours its burning flood. Voices from the right,
from the left, from above, from below, represent the conflicting
religious opinions and warring political parties of this dawning Future,
already hurtling against those of the dissolving Present.

Into this pandemonium, by his desertion of her for a vain ideal, our
hero has