he breaks the narrow glass, and now is what he should be, the union of the elements, for this is Eros according to the most ancient Greek conception, as we still find even in the Philosophers. In the third act Goethe has adhered to the old legend, according to which, Faust, by means of Mephistopheles, obtained Helen as a concubine, and begat a son, Justus Faustus. Certainly, the employment of this feature was very difficult; and still, even in our days, a poet, L. Bechstein, in his Faust, has been wrecked upon this rock. He has Helen marry Faust; they beget a child; but finally, when Faust makes his will, and turns away unlovingly from wife and child, it is discovered that the Grecian Helen, who in the copperplates is also costumed completely in the antique manner, is a German countess of real flesh and blood, who has been substituted by the Devil; an undeceiving which ought to excite the deepest sympathy. Goethe has finely idealized this legend; he has expressed therein the union of the romantic and classic arts. The third act, this Phantasmagory, is perhaps the most perfect of all, and executed in the liveliest manner. As noble as is the diction of the first and second acts, especially in the lyrical portions, it is here nevertheless by far surpassed. Such a majesty and simplicity, such strength and mildness, unity and variety, in so small a space, are astonishing. First resounds the interchange of the dignity of Æschylus and Sophocles, with the sharp-steeled wit of Aristophanes; then is heard the tone of the Spanish romances, an agreeable, iambic measure, a sweet, ravishing melody; finally, new styles break forth, like the fragments of a prophecy; ancient and modern rhythms clash, and the harmony is destroyed.—Helen returns, after the burning of Troy, to the home of her spouse, Menelaus; the stewardess, aged, wrinkled, ugly, but experienced and intelligent, Phorcyas, receives her mistress in the citadel by command. Opposed to Beauty, as was before said, Mephistopheles can only appear as ugliness, because in the realm of beautiful forms, the Ugly is the Wicked. There arises a quarrel between the graceful, yet pretentious youth of the Chorus, and world-wise, yet stubborn Old Age. Helen has to appease it, and she learns with horror from Phorcyas that Menelaus is going to sacrifice her.—Still, (as on the one hand Grecian fugitives, after the conquest of Constantinople, instilled everywhere into German Life the taste for classic Beauty, and as, on the other hand, one of the Ottomans in Theophania—like Faust—won a Helen, and thereby everywhere arose a striving after the appropriation of the Antique,) the old stewardess saves her, and bears her through the air together with her beautiful train, to the Gothic citadel of Faust, where the humble and graceful behavior of the iron men towards the women, in striking contrast to their hard treatment on the banks of the Eurotas, at once wins the female heart. The watchman of the tower, Lynceus, lost in