The Doctor falls down in a swoon; the fair apparitions vanish; and Mephistopheles, taking the hero on his back, leaves the scene of the luckless conjuration amid darkness and confusion. Thus ends the first act. The second act displays the old Gothic, high-vaulted, narrow chamber which we remember to have seen in the first scene of the first act of this strange drama. This chamber formerly belonged to Doctor Faust; it now belongs to his hopeful disciple in the art of alchemy, the learned Doctor Wagner, whom we at once recognise as an old friend. To refresh old memories further, the same young student is introduced, to whom Mephistopheles, masqued in academical cap and gown, had given such admirable instructions on his first entrance to college life. He is now no longer a freshman, but a Bachelor of Arts, well crammed with the customary amount of book lore, notable, also, for a certain heroic dash of scepticism, which has taught him to believe that a large amount of what passes for learning in the world is humbug, and that the professors of learning, generally, are only a more respectable sort of quacks. He stands in no need now of a Faust or a Mephistopheles to instruct him; for he knows more than all the most learned doctors can teach him by the simple omnipotence of his own conceit. He has studied theology under some neologic doctor of the age, is a decided disbeliever in the personality of the Devil, and boasts with the most confident faith in the infallibility of his own /Ego/--"_Unless I will, no devil may exist!_" But the principal character in this scene is the learned Doctor Wagner himself, who is exhibited in his laboratory, bending and blowing over the hot coals of his furnace in the act of making a man. And anon, not so much by the chymick wit of Wagner, of course, as by the magic of Mephistopheles, /Homunculus/ does actually come forth, all glowing and eager, enclosed within a glass phial, a brisk little fellow, brimful of elastic energy, and fired with the heroic resolve to be developed into the fulness of the freedom of the perfect man, bursting his vitreous hull with all possible expedition. To his chymick "fatherkin" Wagner he pays little or no respect, but recognises Mephistopheles on the spot as first cousin; in Faust, and the dreams of Spartan Helen that occupy his fancy, being, like the Doctor, of a hot and amorous temperament, he takes a wonderful interest; and, spurred on by that lust of intellectual adventure which is characteristic of his nature, after a few preliminary remarks, proposes to Mephistopheles that they should all three set themselves afloat on the magic mantle, and balloon over to Thessaly, where, amid the haunts of Erichtho and other famous witches, an assembly of old classical ghosts and goblins, heroes and heroines, is that night to be held. On this phantasmal expedition the worthy triad accordingly set out without delay; Homunculus to enlarge his mind and achieve development; Faust