cheek (smooth or furrowed, yours or mine); and, where tears should course, I'd draw the waters down. To say where a joke should come in, or a pun be left out. To bring my personæ on and off like a Beau Nash; and I'd Frankenstein them there. To bring three together on the stage at once; they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than two, and there they stand, till it is the time, without being the season, to withdraw them. "I am teaching Emma Latin, to qualify her for a superior governesship, which we see no prospect of her getting. 'Tis like feeding a child with chopt hay from a spoon. Sisyphus, his labors were as nothing to it. "Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a deponent enters, like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. Her prepositions are suppositions; her conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her concords disagree; her interjections are purely English' Ah!' and 'Oh!' with a yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is a lazy, blockheadly supine. As I say to her, ass in præsenti rarely makes a wise man in futuro. "But I dare say it was so with you when you began Latin and a good while after. "Good bye! Mary's love. "Yours truly, "C. LAMB." It was in 1833 that Mrs. Shelley first went to reside at Harrow. She complains of living very solitarily there, though she was cheered by seeing her son's progress in his studies. All this while she continued to correspond with her old friend, Mrs. Gisborne; and in a letter to her, dated "Harrow, June 11th, 1835," she gossips about her own estimate of her literary powers. She states that when she saw Kean on her return to England, she greatly desired to write for the stage, but that her father earnestly dissuaded her. Nevertheless, she felt persuaded that she could have written a good tragedy; but she adds that she could not do so now, as her feelings are blighted, her ambition gone, and her mind wrecked by loneliness. "You speak of women's intellect," she continues: " we can scarcely do more than judge by ourselves. I know that, however clever I may be, there is in me a want of eagle-winged resolution, that appertains to my intellect as well as my moral character, and renders me what I am one of broken purposes, failing thoughts, and a heart all wounds. My mother had more energy of character; still, she had not sufficient fire of imagination. short, my belief is whether there be sex in souls or In not - that the sex of our material mechanism makes us quite different creatures; better, though weaker, but wanting in the higher grades of intellect. I am almost sorry to send you this letter it is so querulous and sad; yet, if I write with any effusion, the truth will creep out, and my life since you went has been so strained by sorrows and disappointments, I have no hope. In a few years, when I get over my present feelings, and live wholly in Percy, I shall be happier." William Godwin died in 1836; an event which, though it could not have been much longer postponed, as the philosopher had reached the age of eighty, was a great grief to Mrs. Shelley, who was tenderly attached to her father. In the following year, her son went to Cambridge, and in 1844, on the death of Sir Timothy Shelley, he succeeded to the title. But, at the same moment that happier and brighter prospects seemed to open to her view, and when she had made arrangements for writing the life of her husband, symptoms of illness, of a threatening character, showed themselves. From time to time they appeared and subsided; but gradually her old energy went, and she died in London on the 21st of February, 1851, in the fiftyfourth of her age. year The following verses on her death appeared in the Leader: LINES ON THE DEATH OF MRS. SHELLEY. Another, yet another, snatch'd away, By Death's grasp, from among us! Yet one more Renewing, realizing, once again, With daring fancy, on her thrilling page, The fabled story of Prometheus old. O gifted sister, lovely in thyself, And claiming from the world the meed of love! Mourn her not, Earth! her spirit, disenthrall'd, In endless fellowship, 'mid brighter spheres, The husband of her heart, the bright-ey'd child Like heaven's dews upon the sunburnt plain. Mourn her not, Earth! she is at rest with him, Happy departed ones, a brief farewell! Edinburgh, February 24th, 1851. E. W. L. EXTRACTS FROM MRS. SHELLEY'S PRIVATE JOURNAL. SOME quotations from this journal have been made in the preceding pages; but further extracts are here appended, for the sake of the interest they possess. "October 2d, 1822. On the 8th of July I finished my journal. This is a curious coincidence. The date still remains the fatal 8th- a monument to show that all ended then. And I begin again? Oh, never! But several motives induce me, when the day has gone down, and all is silent around me, steeped in sleep, to pen, as occasion wills, my reflections and feelings. First, I have no friend. For eight years I communicated, with unlimited freedom, with one whose genius far transcending mine, awakened and guided my thoughts. I conversed with him; rectified my errors of judgment; obtained new lights from him; and my mind was satisfied. Now I am alone - oh, how alone. The stars may behold my tears, and the winds drink my sighs; but my thoughts |