garden is not ours; but then you know the people let us run about in it whenever Percy and I are tired of sitting in the house.'

"The naiveté of this expression," adds De Quincy, "run about,' contrasting so picturesquely with the intermitting efforts of the girlish wife at supporting a matron-like gravity, now that she was doing the honors of her house to married ladies, caused all the party to smile. And me,' he continues, "it caused profoundly to sigh, four years later, when the gloomy death of this young creature, now frozen in a distant grave, threw back my rembembrance upon her fawn-like playfulness, which, unconsciously to herself, the girlish phrase of 'run about,' so naturally betrayed."

Of the nature of Shelley's speculations at this period, we may form a fair estimate from a letter which Southey addresses to a friend, dated January 14th, 1812. He says:

"There is a man at Keswick who acts upon me as my own ghost would do. He is just what I was in 1784. His name is Shelley, son to the member for Shoreham; with £6000 a-year entailed upon him, and as much more in his father's power to cut off.

"Beginning with romances of ghosts and murder, and with poetry at Eton, he passed at Oxford into metaphysics; printed half-a-dozen pages, which he entitled the Necessity of Atheism;' sent one anonymously to Coplestone, in expectation, I suppose, of converting him; was expelled in consequence; married a girl of seventeen, after being turned out of doors by his father, and here they both are in lodgings, living upon £200 a-year, which her father allows them.

"He has come to the fittest physician in the world. At present he has got to the Pantheistical stage of philosophy; and in the course of a week, I expect he will be a Berkleyan, for I have put him on a course of Berkley.

It has surprised him a good deal to meet for the first time in his life with a man who perfectly understands him, and does him full justice. I tell him all the difference between us is, that he is nineteen, and I am thirty-seven; and I dare say it will not be long before I shall succeed in convincing him that he may be a true philosopher, and do a great deal of good with £6000 a-year; the thought of which

troubles him a great deal more at present than ever the want of sixpence (for I have known that want) did me.

"God help us! the world

wants mending, though he did not set about it

CHAPTER XXI.

Shelley a student of Bishop Berkley-Unsuccessful intercession of the Duke of Norfolk with Shelley's father-De Quincy's description of Shelley-The poet's sudden departure from Keswick-Continued destitute condition-His wandering life-Arrival in Cork— Visits Killarney-Arrival in Dublin-Becomes a political agitator-His speech at a repeal meeting.

THE ideal philosophy, as expounded by Bishop Berkley, was a new era in the speculations of our poet, and, doubtless, tended materially to influence the notions he afterwards adopted, and with which he was already so deeply imbued.

In the pursuit of scepticism, what seemed most at this time to attract his notice, was the marginal notes in the volumes which Southey obtained for his perusal; for many years after his visit to Cumberland, in a letter to Leigh Hunt, he said:

"Do you know that when I was in Cumberland, I got Southey to borrow a copy of Berkley, from Mr. Lloyd, and I remember observing some pencil notes in it, probably written by Lloyd, which I thought particularly acute; one especially struck me, as being the assertion of a doctrine of which even then I had been long persuaded; and on which I had founded much of my persuasions as regarded the imagined. cause of the universe: Mind cannot create, it can only perceive.'

But Southey seems altogether to have been in error respecting Shelley's pecuniary circumstances; far from being troubled about the amount of good he might do with £6000 a year, his mind was filled with anxiety to learn how to obtain the means for his immediate necessities.

In a letter to his cousin Medwin, dated November 26th, 1811, describing his present abode as a cottage, situate in a lonely spot, which, furnished, cost thirty shillings per week, he anxiously inquires

"Is there any possible method of raising money without any exorbitant interest, until my coming of age?" and in a second, dated four