They urge him to pray. He replies,

'Call on God? whom Faustus hath abjured! whom Faustus hath blasphemed! O! I would weep, but the devil draws my tears. Gush forth blood instead! yea, life and soul; I would lift up my hands, but they hold them!'

Can we question that such appalling scenes spoke home to the hearts and consciences of our forefathers? The students at length leave him, and determine to spend the night in prayer; and for the last time Mephistophilis enters, exulting

"O thou bewitching fiend, 'twas thy temptation,'

he cries. Mephistophilis answers:

'I do confess it, Faustus, and rejoice;

'Twas I, that when thou wast i' the way to heaven,
Dammed up thy passage; when thou took'st the book
To view the Scriptures, then, I turned the leaves
And led thine eye. What! weepest thou?

'Tis now too late, farewell;

Fools that will laugh on earth must weep in hell!'

The good and the bad angel now enter, the latter to take up the song of exultation, the former to pour his last wail over the lost scholar.

O! thou hast lost celestial happiness!

Pleasures unspeakable, bliss without end,-
Hadst thou affected sweet divinity,

Hell, nor the devil, had had no power then.
Hadst thou kept on that way, Faustus, behold

In what resplendent glory hadst thou sate

On yonder throne, like those bright, shining saints,

And triumphed over hell-that hast thou lost!

And now, poor soul! must thy good angel leave thee!"

The clock strikes eleven; and Faustus stands in agony-for but one hour remains to him. His long soliloquy, rising into the finest poetry, to which the lamentations of the fallen spirits in Pandemonium read but as a fine piece of declamation, is fearfully appalling. We We gave a short specimen in the article before alluded to (No. X. p. 436), but duly to estimate this wonderful passage it should be read as a whole, although we think it would be difficult for the most iron-nerved reader to do so without absolute horror. In religious force, it most resembles Bunyan's awful exhibition of the lost soul, in his fearfully powerful treatise-but it is too solemn to be coolly criticized. The catastrophe now takes place; and after a night of horrors the scholars come in, and see the limbs of the wretched Faustus scattered around. They collect the remains, and while shudder

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ing at his fate, determine, since he was so great a scholar, to give them honourable burial, and the whole concludes with a warning

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That may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things.'

In reading over this wonderful drama, the recollection of the modern Faust,' so highly and so justly lauded, came vividly to our minds; and we found it a very interesting task to compare them together. And most truly is the spirit of the sixteenth century, and of the eighteenth, brought out in both. Marlow's Faustus' is the aspiring, enthusiastic student of the age of deep learning, of unmatched scholarship, of that overmastering thirst for knowledge, which scarcely lingered to count the cost, so it were but attained. Goethe's Faust' is the questioning, doubting, fastidious student, dissatisfied even with the learning that has made him so renowned, and he sits discontented in his study, talking of pestilent philosophy,' and turning away from his books, like the sickly, sated epicure, who loathes the dainty banquet that so tempted him but yesterday. The rise of doubt in their minds is equally distinct. Faust opens the Bible, and reads, In the beginning was the Word,' and vague speculations arise in his mind, just as they might do in an age of general scepticism. But our Faustus seizes at once upon the doctrine of necessity- why then belike we must sin,' and straightway every vexing question of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, chafes in his mind, urging him to fling aside the volume of salvation. The attendant demons, too, are singularly discriminated. The modern Mephistophilis is the mere scoffing, jeering spirit, not too refined, but amusing himself equally among the drunken crew in the wine cellar, as in the study of the solitary muser-a low-company-loving devil, after all, just such as Retsch has imagined him, with leering eye, and a vulgar grin. But the Mephistophilis of Marlow, is the bitter, malignant spirit; and his earnestness, which in the earlier scenes so contrasts with the haughty scorn of his victim, is in far better keeping. The being who had actually tasted the bliss of Heaven, and had fallen, could never be in mood to sit in the seat of the scorner,' and thus, when Faustus in his bravado laughs at future punishment, the lost spirit sternly exclaims

Ah! think so still, till experience change your mind."

To the modern reader, the want of human and relative interest will perhaps urge him to yield the palm to Goëthe's Faustus.' It is true we have no Margaret-indeed, no female character to attract our sympathy; but then, is not the solemn interest of the

main incident weakened by this? There needed not an especial tempter, nor the horrible solemnity of the blood-written signature, to enable a young student to attract, seduce, and forsake a mere country girl! But Marlow's 'Faustus' is all along wrapt in high musings: what were the pleasures of ordinary life to him, who with all the exclusiveness of overmastering attachment had devoted his whole existence to study? And thus he stands before us the type of the scholar of that age, when men shut themselves up in their studies, and toiled sixteen hours a day, and called it paradise. It was to enthusiasts like these that the solemn warning of Faustus'' tragedie' was presented.

Still, Marlow has nothing to compare with that finest scene, where the solitary student, a prey to agonizing feelings, which rise almost to madness, clutches the goblet of laudanum, and then at that very crisis of his fate-the Easter bells fling out their sweet music on the hushed midnight; and the chorus of angels chant Christ is risen,' awakening recollections of his all-trusting childhood, that flash like gleams of sunlight on the thunder-cloud, until he dashes the goblet from his lip, and stands lost in fond remembrance of

'The deep stillness of the Sabbath calm,

The heartfelt fulness of the Sabbath bell.'

In this scene we willingly award the palm to Goëthe.

But yet, in the conduct of the plot, and in the concluding scenes of the elder Faustus,' how sustained is the interest, compared with that of the modern Faust.' After all the magic apparatus, what does Faust do?-even on the Walpurgis night, he is a mere spectator, and Old mother Baubo' holds as important a station as he. And the final scene: all interest for the hero is lost in poor Margaret, while his earnest endeavours to save her, bring him again within the pale of human sympathy, and he seems to us a mere erring youth, to be punished by bitter earthly suffering, rather than by the tremendous forfeit of his soul. Here, again, how finely is the character of the sixteenth century, in comparison with the eighteenth, brought out. It was not out of the depths' of a solemn belief, that the great poet of Germany wrote; his faith faltered, and with it his genius. But Marlow was in solemn earnest. And this it is that renders the dramatists of Elizabeth's day so important as illustrators of the period. They were no showmen with lamp and mirror, and well-chosen apparatus, coolly exhibiting their dissolving views' to the children, all-believing, who gazed, and wondered, and shuddered; but the story was true to the dramatist, as to them. The tale of the barter of the human soul had been falteringly whispered

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beside their cradles; they had looked bodily upon the witch as she passed along, known by name, and hated of all. At the university, for all these dramatists, however their after-life was spent, had graduated there, although the form of the popular faith might change, still the substance was the same. In the mists of that early morning, all was indefinable; and all things, like the giant shadows of the Brocken, took strange shapes; what wonder, then, that men with so many marvels around them should fix no bounds to their belief? Still, the age by some superficial writers so much scorned, because it was the age of faith in the supernatural, was also the age of firm faith in the Scriptures; and thus, it is delightful to meet-in most unexpected juxta-position-with quotations and allusions, which the gentlemen wits of queen Anne's days would have termed most fanatical, and the sober church-going people of the Georgian era, rank methodism. No one, we are sure, can properly estimate the religious character of the age of Elizabeth, unless he diligently studies the old dramatists.

The subject is of great interest, and although we have exceeded our limits, it is far from being exhausted, for we shall find in the dramatic poetry of this reign, and still more in that of the succeeding reign, traits of character and pictures of manners to be met with only there, combined with some of our finest poetry, and, more important still, a reflection of the moral and intellectual character of the period-which we can obtain from no other source.

ART. III.-Christian Socialism, a Lecture. By J. M. LUDLOW, Esq. London.

MR. MACAULAY, in his History of England,' has drawn some vivid comparisons between past and present ages, as regards the condition of the poor, and decides unequivocally in favour of the present. Mr. Carlyle, on the other hand, in his work on Chartism, says: Hitherto, after many tables and statements, one 'is still left mainly to what he can ascertain by his own eyes, look'ing at the concrete phenomenon for himself;' and comes to just an opposite conclusion. Statistical science has failed to supply us with any sufficient guidance in instituting a comparison between subjects involving so many considerations as the past and present condition of particular classes of men. History, also, throws but little light on the subject of the poor in earlier ages, at all suited to our present inquiry. While it furnishes us with

the records of wars, and famines, and pestilences, and of the miseries which have followed in their train, we fail to discover any satisfactory record of the social and industrial condition of the labouring classes. It is true that it affords us sufficient light to enable us to discover that in most of the conditions which constitute the moral and the physical well-being of the greater portion of the community, the present age is in great advancement; but we want proof that it is so with the whole.

The modern ideas of liberty preclude us from thinking any state preferable to our own which retains in bondage the bodies of men, and subjects them to the will of a master. The free exercise of the will is so sweet to human nature, that no sacrifice seems too great in order to secure it. The poorest subsistence, with the free control of one's actions, is deemed preferable to luxury with bondage. But it does not at all follow, because feudal bondage has passed away, and the bodies of men are no longer the chattels of the baronial estate, that therefore men are free. There are thousands of our fellow-countrymen who are under a sterner and far more cruel yoke than was ever imposed by the feudal lord. What bondage can be more terrible than that in which the handloom weavers are held? Their numbers are computed at eight hundred thousand, the principal proportion of whom are compelled to work from morning till night for a miserable pittance of from four shillings and sixpence to seven shillings per week-a sum capable of supplying but the smallest means of keeping body and soul together. Then there are the journeyman tailors, and the sempstresses, and the agricultural labourers, all of whose means of subsistence are decidedly inferior to those of the ancient serf, and with less certainty of attainment; for the baron was forced to feed his serf, and, at least, to keep him in as good condition as the farmer of the present day keeps his horses. But the employer of modern labour has no responsibility of this kind: he looks not at the health of his servant, not at his powers of endurance, but at the quantity and the quality of the work done.

Revelations have been recently made, of a state of wretchedness and suffering in our cities and towns, of which the country generally had no just conception, and which our statistics had not reached. They show that the revolutions in the processes of arts and manufactures which have been effected by science, while they have wonderfully increased the trade and the resources of the country, and the amount of remuneration to the highly skilled artizan, have had a proportionate influence in lowering the condition of the partially skilled, or the mere labourer. They give double power to the graphic words of Mr. Carlyle in his work on Chartism :