corruptibility of mankind, and in the Crusades at their fanaticism; in the study of Kepler he comprehends the sickening vanity of all attempts at real knowledge, and in Paris he is shown the godless fury of a people fighting for the dream called Liberty. So in the end, Adam, despairing of his race, wants to commit suicide, when, in the critical moment, Eve tells him that she is going to be a mother by him; whereby his intention of discontinuing his race by suicide is baffled. Adam then prostrates himself before God, who encourages him to hope and trust, making him feel that man is part of an infinite and indestructible power, and will struggle not quite in vain. Like Goethe’s Faust, the great poem of Madách was not meant for the stage; yet, like Faust, it has proved of intense effect on the stage too. It is, as may be seen, a philosophic poem excelling rather in the beauty and loftiness of the thoughts conveyed or suggested than by power of characterization or dramatic vigour. In general literature we should like to compare it most to the “_De rerum natura_” of Lucretius. The powerful melancholy of the Roman is of a kind with the gloom of the Hungarian; and while the former dwells more on the material and religious aspect of man, and the latter on social phenomena in all their width and breadth, yet both sing the same tempestuous _nocturne_ of Man’s sufferings and shortcomings, illuminating the night of their despondency by stars of luminous thought. Madách died at too early an age to finish more than this one masterpiece. His other poems are inferior.