Ir intellectual powers of the first order, if a disinterestedness that was pushed almost to generous romance, if social virtues that endeared him to every one with whom he came in contact, if purity of heart and sweetness of temper and uprightness of life-if these entitle to a place among the amiable and the gifted and the noble-hearted, that place belongs to PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. Born and educated amidst the affluences of British aristocracy, cradled (so to speak) in orthodoxy and conformity and titled privilege, he was a democrat and a heretic. His father, Sir John Shelley, disinherited him on account of his opinions, or rather of his honesty in expressing them; and the world continued a persecution against him for the same heinous crime; a persecution which did not terminate with his death, but pursued even the memory of one, whom mankind in the mass were too hypocritical to applaud, or perhaps too gross to appreciate. He was arraigned, tried, and convicted of heterodoxy; and that was enough to justify, in the world's eyes, the murder of his reputation. Yet the bitterest of his enemies dare not accuse him of selfi hness, of ingratitude, of unkindness, of any moral de linquency. His only offences were against orthodox opinions; his crimes were the crimes of conscientiousness; |