The description of this great court masquerade occupies a considerable space in Goethe's drama, and is generally looked upon by the commentators as one of the least successful parts of _Faust_. The question is, how are we to estimate _success_ in such a matter? For myself I confess that I find this masquerade scene tedious and irksome, and can with difficulty read it through; but is not this just the effect that Goethe wished to produce? Is not this just the effect that society, with all its masquerades and mummeries, inevitably produces on any one who, like Faust and with Faust's ideals and aspirations, is making trial of life in order to discover under what conditions it is worth living? Instead of telling us in so many words that Faust makes trial of all the pomps and vanities of fashionable society and finds them utterly empty and ridiculous, fatal to all true life and disgusting to all true manliness, Goethe gives us a picture of this tiresome foolish scene, with all its absurdities and falsities and trumpery grandeurs, amidst which our friend Mephistopheles is so entirely in his element, and where Faust, with evident self-contempt and disgust, forces himself for a moment to play a part. The various elements of fashionable society--and, as a contrast, certain very unfashionable elements--are introduced under the disguise of these masked figures. Marketable belles and heiresses in the guise of flower-girls offer their charms and their fortunes in the form of flowers and fruits to the highest bidder. The anxious mother is there with her daughters, hoping that among so many fools _one_ may be at last secured. Idlers, parasites, toadies, club-frequenters and diners-out are there in the masks of court-fools, and buffoons. The working man, the trade-unionist and the striker, comes marching amidst this scene of revelry, forcing his way through the ranks of consternated society, roughly asserting the sole nobility of labour and demanding the overthrow of the aristocrat and the capitalist--no new cry, as you see! Indeed it is as old as Rome and Athens and Babylon--as old, almost, as humanity itself. Then appear the Graces, symbols of the refinements and elegancies of life, and the Fates, symbolizing the powers of Order and Law, and the Furies, the types of revolution and war, and a huge elephant, the incorporation of the unwieldy State or Public, reminding one of the 'Leviathan' of the philosopher Hobbes, and Thersites (that evil-tongued mischief-maker described by Homer) representing society-scandal and calumny. Then comes a chariot whose charioteer is a beautiful boy, representing art or poetry. He is the same Euphorion whom we shall meet later as the son of Faust and Helen, and identical with Byron. On the chariot is enthroned Faust as Plutus the God of Money, and behind him as groom or armour-bearer sits Mephisto, an emaciated hollow-eyed apparition denoting Avarice. Nymphs, Fauns, Satyrs and