Thoughts that upbursting in his soul ferment,
Whirl him away into the infinite,

The loveliest star that gems the firmament,
And all the earth's most exquisite delight
He asks from each, yet never cometh rest
From near or far to his unquiet breast.

THE LORD.

Though now he serves me in perplexity,

Soon will I lead him where all things are clear ; The gardener knows when green buds deck the tree That flowers and fruit will grace the coming year.

What will

MEPHISTOPHELES.

you wager that shall lose him now,

you

To tempt him my way me if you allow.

THE LORD.

'Tis thine whilst yet he draws the breath of life,
To tempt him as thou listest; 'tis the lot
Of man to err whilst lasts his earthly strife.

MEPHISTOPHELES.

I thank thee kindly, for the dead are not
Much to my taste, I like far more

Life's plump fresh cheeks, and shut my door

Against a corpse; Grimalkin's play

With a caught mouse is more my way.

THE LORD.

Enough, it is allowed thee, draw this soul*

Forth from its deepest spring and bear him down,
If thou canst grasp him with thee on thy path,
And stand rebuked when that thou must confess
An upright man, even in his dark distress,
Still knoweth well the way that he should go.

MEPHISTOPHELES.

Done. That it will not be tedious, I trust;
About losing the match I'm in no tribulation,
And when I have won it, remember you must

Allow me to triumph in full exultation.

By my faith he shall greedily lick up the dust,
Like the serpent of old, my much honoured relation.

THE LORD.

So be it. In that also have thy will:

* Ab ziehen here I understand to signify to draw out (as used colloquially, vulgo to pump), to examine, to test, to analyse, to sift. Job is not the only parallel to this scene in Holy Writ.

"Simon, Simon, behold Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat."-Luke xxii. 31.

Such as thou art I never have abhorred;
Of all the spirits that deny the Lord,*

+ The libertine I easiest can endure;
Too quickly slackens mankind's ‡ energy,
He soon delights in absolute repose,
Therefore to him I willingly accord

A comrade that allures and influences him ; §
And devil himself aids in creation still.

But ye, the perfect sons of God, enjoy

* Deny not his existence, or his power, but his goodness. + Great difference of opinion exists as to how the word 'Schalk' ought to be translated. Our word Scamp,' used in its more opprobrious sense seems to express it most nearly. I have already given my reason for considering that Mephistopheles is the embodiment of that portion of the evil principle represented by Belial, and Cruden's definition appears to me exactly to render the schalk, viz. one that is good for nothing, a libertine.

Erschslaffen is to slacken, and has nothing to say to slumbering.

"Whilst we labour to subdue our passions, we should take care not to extinguish them. Subduing our passions is disengaging ourselves from the world; to which, however, whilst we reside in it, we must always bear relation, and we may detach ourselves to such a degree as to pass a useless and insipid life, which we were not meant to do. Our existence here is at least one part of a system."-Shenstone.

This passage is to be considered as a benedictory dismissal.

The living riches of the Beautiful.

The growing fulness of the time to come,*

6

* Das werdende, the coming into existence; the principle of progressive development towards perfection that pervades the universe. Werden,' to become, indicates being in a state of transition, in opposition to 'Seyn,' to be, which signifies existence perfect, and, therefore, unchangeable. It is, however, remarkable that the passage, I AM THAT I AM,' Exodus iii. 14, is translated by Luther, Ich werde seyn der ich seyn werde.' “Rising to the highest elevation, of conceiving the entire stellar creation spread out as a mighty plain, may there not be seen, even as they are internally harmonious, the firmaments themselves, rejoicing in common external sympathies, and in majestic concert sweeping through profound abysses. Let no feeling of the infinitude of such a power, or of the awfulness of the requisite durations, here stun the human mind, or cause it to repel what having ascended through so many gradations -it is entitled to assume to be probable. To realise the meaning of such a perspective, let us conceive it viewed rather by some far loftier being, who from the battlements of his own abode, can see beneath his feet, these mighty motions proceeding in unbroken harmony. To such a Being-and may not Man too one day become as such ?-there will not, however mysterious it may yet remain, come from the whole of that vast interwoven agency one thought to crush or one doubt to bewilder. There below him must they roll-those stupendous arrangements-not with a sound of fetters, but peacefully evolving grand results, and growing even as they course onwards, themselves into something more perfect. No clank

D

That works in life eternal, compass Ye

In its sweet fold of love, and all that yet

ing of fetters-only this august universe in undying strength moving freely as the river, and itself ever enlarging, expanding with the purposes of the UNFATHOMABLE WILL."

NICHOLLS'S Architecture of the Heavens. "The chronology of God is not as our chronology. See the patience of waiting evinced in the slow development of the animated kingdoms throughout the long series of geological ages. Nothing is it to him that an entire goodly planet, should, for an inconceivable period, have no inhabiting organisms, superior to reptiles. Nothing is it to him that whole astral systems should be for infinitely longer spaces of time in the nebular embryo, unfit for the reception of one breathing or sentient being out of the myriad multitudes who are yet to manifest his goodness and his greatness. Progressive, not constant effect is his sublime rule. What then can it be to him that the human race goes through a career of impulsive acting for a few thousand years. The cruelties of ungoverned anger, the tyrannies of the rude and proud over humble and good, the martyr's pains and the patriot's despair, what are all these but incidents of an evolution of superior being which has been prearranged and set forward in independent action, free within a certain limit, but in the man constrained, through primordial law, to go on ever brightening and perfecting, yet never while the present dispensation of nature shall last to be quite perfect!"

VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION.

"The New Testament does not after death here promise us a soul hereafter unconnected with matter, and which has no connection with our present mind and soul, independent of time