In several of the old stories of Faustus, we read that he had a cousin at Wittenberg, who took him as a boy to his house, brought him up, and made him his heir when he died. If this was true, it would be more probable that he was a native of Saxony than of Suabia. It is, however, more probable that this narrative rests on one of the numerous cases found in old writings in general, and above all in the history of Faustus, in which the names Wittenberg and Würtemberg are confounded. Our hero's abode at the former place was very probably merely that of a traveller; he left there, as we shall soon see, a very unenviable reputation. It is true that Saxony was the principal scene of the Doctor's achievements; but this very circumstance makes it improbable that he was born and brought up there, as it is well known that "a prophet hath no honor in his own country." Faust's studies were not confined to medicine and the physical sciences. He was also considered eminent as a philologist and philosopher. Physiology, however, with its various branches and degenerate offshoots, was the idol of the scholars of that age, and of Faustus among the rest. A passionate desire to fathom the mysteries of Nature, to dive into the most hidden recesses of moral and physical creation, had seized men of real learning, and seduced them into mingling absurd astrological and magical fancies with profound and scholarlike researches. The deepest thinkers of their time, like Nostradamus, Cardan, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Thomas Campanella, flattered themselves that they could enter, by means of art and science, into communion with good or evil spirits, on whose aid they depended for obtaining knowledge, fame, wealth, and worldly honors and enjoyments. Faustus was one of those whom a passion for inquiry, in league with a powerful, sensual nature, led astray. What had been originally an honest thirst for knowledge, a deep interest in the supernatural, became gradually a morbid craving after the miraculous, the pretension of having attained the unattainable, and the attempt to represent it by means of vulgar jugglery. Dr. Faustus seems at first to have settled as a practising physician, and at this period of his life Wagner appears as his _famulus_; for we never find this _Philister_ among scholars as a companion of the travelling Faustus, although his connection with him was apparently lasting. According to the popular legend, the Doctor made him his heir, and expressly obtained for him Auerhahn, (Heathcock,) a familiar spirit in the shape of a monkey. This was a sort of caricature of Mephistopheles, who became, through his ludicrous clumsiness, a pet-devil of the populace in the puppet-shows, particularly in Holland. Widmann calls Wagner _Waiger_; while in all other publications referring to him he bears his right name, Christoph Wagner.