But nothing can better show the difference of result between a stern and earnest life, and one of partial accommodation, than a comparison between the Paridiso and that of the second part of Faust. In both a soul, gradually educated and led back to God, is received at last not through merit, but grace. But O the difference between the grandly humble reliance of old Catholicism, and the loophole redemption of modern sagacity! Dante was a _man_, of vehement passions, many prejudices, bitter as much as sweet. His knowledge was scanty, his sphere of observation narrow, the objects of his active life petty, compared with those of Goethe. But, constantly retiring to his deepest self, clearsighted to the limitations of man, but no less so to the illimitable energy of the soul, the sharpest details in his work convey a largest sense, as his strongest and steadiest flights only direct the eye to heavens yet beyond. Yet perhaps he had not so hard a battle to wage, as this other great poet. The fiercest passions are not so dangerous foes to the soul as the cold scepticism of the understanding. The Jewish demon assailed the man of Uz with physical ills, the Lucifer of the middle ages tempted his passions; but the Mephistopheles of the eighteenth century bade the finite strive to compass the infinite, and the intellect attempt to solve all the problems of the soul. This path Faust had taken: it is that of modern necromancy. Not willing to grow into God by the steady worship of a life, men would enforce his presence by a spell; not willing to learn his existence by the slow processes of their own, they strive to bind it in a word, that they may wear it about the neck as a talisman. Faust, bent upon reaching the centre of the universe through the intellect alone, naturally, after a length of trial, which has prevented the harmonious unfolding of his nature, falls into despair. He has striven for one object, and that object eludes him. Returning upon himself, he finds large tracts of his nature lying waste and cheerless. He is too noble for apathy, too wise for vulgar content with the animal enjoyments of life. Yet the thirst he has been so many years increasing is not to be borne. Give me, he cries, but a drop of water to cool my burning tongue. Yet, in casting himself with a wild recklessness upon the impulses of his nature yet untried, there is a disbelief that any thing short of the All can satisfy the immortal spirit. His first attempt was noble, though mistaken, and under the saving influence of it, he makes the compact, whose condition cheats the fiend at last. Kannst du mich schmeichelnd je beluegen Dass ich mir selbst gefallen mag, Kannst du mich mit Genuss betruegen: Das sey fuer mich der letzte Tag. Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen: Verweile doch! du bist so schoen! Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen, Dann will ich gern zu Grunde gehen.