At this period of his life Shelley had a habit of writing letters to any person that interested him. Among others, he opened a correspondence with Miss Browne, (afterward Mrs. Hemans,) which continued some time, till it was broken off by her mother, who probably did not relish some of the young poet's theories in regard to domestic life. In the same way his intercourse began with Miss Harriet Westbrooke, the beautiful daughter of a retired coffee-house keeper. To letters succeeded stolen interviews, (the young lady was at a boarding-school,) and to interviews, Gretna Green. This was in 1811.

Hitherto, probably, Sir Timothy had looked upon the dogmatic excesses of his son as only another form of sowing those wild oats from which commonly is reaped in due time a crop of tame respectability and decorum. Theories, as long as they were abstract, did not disturb him, for he knew that they might be, and commonly were, turned out of doors, whenever society as it was offered greater inducements. But now that his son had legally indented himself to a theory for life, it was quite another and more serious affair. The chance of being grandfather to a coffee-house keeper's grandson, who, in spite of him, might be the future master of Castle Goring, was probably not a pleasant one. Hitherto, in his treatment of his son, he had neglected to prac tise on the obvious truth that the opinions of the

young resemble certain animals which need only to be sufficiently urged in one direction to bolt madly in the other, and that their extravagances have this likeness of virtue that they grow all the more for the weight that is laid upon them. The baronet resolved to punish what he could not cure, and accordingly cut his son off from all paternal assistance. The bride's father, however, was likely to view the matter in another light, (it would doubtless be no great cross to him to see his grandson a baronet,) and he allowed the young couple an annuity of two hundred pounds.*

It is a little odd, considering Shelley's opinions about marriage, that he should have been married twice to his first wife. After their return from Gretna Green, the ceremony was performed again at Cuckfield in Sussex. For some time, he seems to have led a rather migratory life. We find him for a time at Keswick, where he became acquainted with Southey, for whose poetry he had at this time an extravagant admiration; then in Dublin, projecting histories of Ireland, which result in a small political pamphlet, now irrecoverable; then in the Isle of Man, as a kind

quotes a letter of The letter proves,

Captain Medwin doubts this, and Shelley's in confirmation of his doubt. at least, that the father-in-law sent him something, but this would seem to have been enough to support him, for it does not appear that he was able to raise any money on his expectations. Meanwhile he was able to live for two years in some way or other.

of Alsatia, sacred from the foot of bailiff; and last in Wales, whence he appears to have come to London again.

The results of this marriage were two children, a daughter and a son, and a separation. The circumstances of the disagreement between Shelley and his wife, have never been cleared up. Perhaps it would have been quite as noble if Shelley had continued the martyr of a youthful misstep instead of making his wife the victim or notions about marriage in which there is no evidence that she shared. However this may be, he made himself so acceptable to Miss Godwin, daughter of the novelist and Mary Wolstonecraft, that she consented to elope with him to Switzerland in July, 1814. They crossed to Calais in an open boat, not without danger of being lost. A Miss Claremont went with them. She also was a deaconess in the Church of the Elective Affinities, and (Lord Byron having joined the party) became the mother of the Allegra, mentioned in his will. This, however, seems to have been on a second visit to the Continent, the fugitives having in the meanwhile returned for a short time to England. This last continental tour occupied but a few months, during which the northern part of Italy was visited.

Shelley came back to England again, bringing with him a child by his new connection, and went to Bath. But now was to come the terrible recoil

which almost inevitably results from an attempt to bend an entire social system out of the way of the passions of a single man. However the brain may philosophize, the heart remains loyal to its traditions, and though Mrs. Shelley may have been captivated with the doctrine of attractions while it drew her husband to her, she was not prepared for the more liberal application of it which drew him away. No theorizing can sweeten desertion; and the unhappy woman, disenchanted of the dream, and forsaken by the substance, sought shelter in death.

The lovers of Shelley as a man and a poet have done what they could to palliate his conduct in this matter. But a question of morals, as between man and society, cannot be reduced to any individual standard however exalted. Our partiality for the man only heightens our detestation of the error. The greater Shelley's genius, the nobler his character and impulses, so much the more startling is the warning. If we make our own inclinations the measure of what is right, we must be the sterner in curbing them. A woman's heart is too delicate a thing to serve as a fulcrum for the lever with which a man would overturn any system, however conventional. The misery of the elective-affinity scheme is that men are not chemical substances, and that in nine cases in ten the force of the attraction works more constantly and lastingly upon the woman than the man.

There is no stronger argument against it than the Memoirs of Mary Wolstonecraft. The Mormon polygamy is nothing more than a plant from the same evil seed sown in a baser soil, and is an attempt to compromise between the higher instincts of mankind, organized in their institutions, and the bestial propensities of sensualized individuals.

The suicide of Shelley's wife took place on the 10th of November, 1816, and shortly afterward he married Miss Godwin, at her father's solicitation, and took up his abode at Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire. His means of support were ample, as he had succeeded to some property in his own right which yielded a yearly income of one thousand pounds. During his residence here the custody of his two children by his first wife was taken away from him by a decision of the Lord Chancellor Eldon, on the ground of atheistical principles attributed to their father. Shelley felt this deeply, and all his life. His poem of

We are unable to see that Shelley suffered any great amount of hardship or injustice in this matter. He had first deserted the children himself,- one of them yet unborn,and then left them in the keeping and under the influence of a woman whom he did not think a fit companion for himself. One would rather be inclined to say that his patent in them was void for non-user. The depth and ardor of his attachment to them may be questioned under the circumstances. At least, it is natural that their maternal relatives should not wish to have them brought up under the influence of principles that had resulted so disastrously.