castle of Este; whose dark, massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ruined crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sank behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apennines, while, to the east, the horizon was lost in misty distance."

Julian and Maddalo is one of the most fervent, dramatic, and intense of its author's productions; and yet one of the most compact, highly wrought, and mature. The descriptions of Italian scenery are wonderfully minute and particular, when we consider that the poet had been only about half a year in the country. Of the magnificence of the word-pictures-especially in that gorgeous vision of a Venetian sunset, sphering in a transitory glory the sea, the ships, the palaces, the distant. hills, and the ghastly madhouse-it would be difficult to say too much; while the soliloquy of the poor maniac is dusky and thick with human passion and pathos - the whole tragedy of a sorrowful life brought within the compass of a few pages. The poem, moreover, is interesting on account of the portraiture given by Shelley of Lord Byron, who is figured under the name of Maddalo Julian being Shelley himself. The little Allegra is also described in lines of gentle pathos which have never been surpassed :

"The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim:

Ere Maddalo arose, I call'd on him:

And, whilst I waited, with his child I play'd;

A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;

A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,
Graceful without design, and unforeseeing;
With eyes
oh! speak not of her eyes, which seem
Twin mirrors of Italian heaven, yet gleam

With such deep meaning as we never see
But in the human countenance. With me
She was a special favorite: I had nurs'd
Her fine and feeble limbs, when she came first
To this bleak world; and yet she seem'd to know,
On second sight, her ancient playfellow,

Less changed than she was, by six months or so.
For, after her first shyness was worn out,

We sat there, rolling billiard balls about,
When the Count enter'd."

While they were at Este, their little daughter, Clara, showed signs of suffering from the heat of the climate. Her indisposition being increased to an alarming extent by teething, the parents hastened to Venice for the best advice, but discovered at Fusina that, in their agitation, they had forgotten the passport. The soldiers on duty attempted to prevent their crossing the lagune; but Shelley, with his usual vehemence, augmented by the urgent nature of the case, broke through, and they reached Venice. Unhappily, it was too late; the little creature died just as they arrived.

At this period Shelley composed his exquisite descriptive poem, Lines written among the Euganean Hills. In November, he and Mrs. Shelley started southward, and on the 1st of December they arrived at Naples. In the mean while, they had hastily visited Ferrara, Bologna, and Rome, as well as other towns of less note. The winter was spent in the hot and indolent city of the

south; and here the Shelleys lived very solitarily – too much so, according to the opinion of his widow, who thinks that a little intellectual society would have done great service to the spirits of her husband, now once more in a bad state of health, and often plunged into extreme gloom. He records this state of mind in his Stanzas written in Dejection near Naples (December, 1818), giving vent to his sorrow in lines which unite the utmost gentleness of pathos to the most lovely conceptions of poetry and the finest harmonies of verse:

"Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are:
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death, like sleep, might steal on me,

And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony."

But this dejection

the result of many causes

gave

place to a happier mood before the poet was snatched away from life.

The letters pertaining to this year may now follow in their regular sequence.

FROM GODWIN TO SHELLEY.

"Skinner Street, June 8th, 1818.

"MY DEAR SHElley,

"You are in a new country, and must be from day to day seeing objects and experiencing sensations, of which I

should be delighted to hear. Write as to your equal, and, if that word is not discordant to your feelings, your friend. It would be strange indeed if we could not find topics of communication that may be gratifying to both. Let each of us dwell on those qualities in the other which may contribute most to the increase of mutual kindness. It is the judgment of the human species, and is fully accordant to my own experience, that the arrival and perusal of a letter from an absent friend is naturally one of the sources of the most delicious emotions of which man is susceptible.

"Since I began this letter, I have conceived the plan of a book which is, I think, a great desideratum in English history and biography, to be called The Lives of the Commonwealth's Men. I would confine myself to ten names:- Sir Henry Vane, Henry Martin, Henry Ireton, John Bradshaw, John Milton, John Hutchinson, Edmund Ludlow, Oliver St. John, Nathaniel Fiennes, Algernon Sidney. The whole might be comprised in two volumes, or perhaps in one. It has been the mode for more than a hundred and fifty years to load the Commonwealth's men (regicides, as they are often called) with all the abuse and scurrility that language can furnish. I would have them shown as they are "Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice;" - and perhaps they will be found equal to any ten men in the annals of the Roman republic. There were great and admirable personages among the Presbyterians - Hampden and Pym, for instance; these, fortunately for themselves, died early; but the Presbyterians have this slur upon them, that they contributed most actively, after the death of Cromwell, to bring back the King, and thus to occasion all the bloody, inhuman, and profligate scenes that followed. I would admit none into my list but such to whom I could apply Horace's rule

'Servetur ad imum,

Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.'

"Now, this work I shall never write. All that I intended,

therefore, was to put down the plan of it in memorandum on a page of paper. But in my bed this morning I thought Mary, perhaps, would like to write it; and I should think she is perfectly capable. The books to be consulted would be comparatively few: Noble's Memoirs of the Protectorate House of Cromwell; Whitlock's Memorials of English Affairs under Charles the First; Ludlow's Memoirs; Colonel Hutchinson's Memoirs; the trial of the twenty-nine Regicides; the trial of Sir Henry Vane; also, dying speeches of Corbet, Okey, and Barkstead. In a few instances, as I have observed in my letter of advice, the references of these authors might lead to further materials.

"By such a book at this, the English history, in one of its most memorable periods, would be made intelligible, which has never yet been the case. It has been slurred and confounded, and no grand and consistent picture of the men and their characters has ever been made out. There is a strong and inveterate prejudice in this country in favor of what these heroes styled the government of a single person.' I would at least have it shown that ten men, some of them never surpassed in ability, perhaps none of them in integrity, in this island, devoted themselves in heart and soul, with all their powers, to a purer creed.

"Very affectionately yours,

"W. GODWIN."

FROM MRS. SHELLEY TO MRS. GISBORNE.

"Casa Bertini, Bagni di Lucca, June 15, 1818.

"MY DEAR MADAM,

"Ir is strange, after having been in the habit of visiting you daily now for so many days, to have no communication with you, and, after having been accustomed for a month to the tumult of Via Grande, to come to this quiet scene, where we hear no sound except the rushing of the river in the valley