of his false philosophy. The happiness and dignity of man and woman require, not a confusion, but a complete distinction, of their relations; and the title of the "weaker vessel," being, on the best authority, the woman's peculiar title to honour, is not to be forgotten and ignored, but contemplated and loved. Only thus can their absolutely infinite capability of being mutually exalted come into effect. They are like the two plates of the philosophical instrument called the electrical doubler, which by mutual opposition under proper circumstances indefinitely intensify their contrasted conditions: her softness, delicacy, tenderness, compliance, fear, and confidence, opposed to whatever strength, courage, gravity, firmness, dignity, and originality, there may have been in him before, render a certain exaltation of these virtues, for her sake, easy; every such exaltation upon his part induces in her a more passionate submission, whereby her peculiar qualities are correspondingly developed; and every such increment of loving and intelligent self-devotion calls upon him, in turn, for the delightful exercise of a higher degree of manhood, in order that he may deserve it. How hopeful would be that reform which should begin where life begins, in the relation of the sexes! How hopeless all reforms which attempt to clear the social current any where but at its source! There are certain moral processes which seem to be antecedent to religion. St. Paul tells us that the man who does not provide for those of his own household has not only denied the faith, but "is worse than an infidel;" and religion does not so much teach as assume a knowledge of the primary facts of nature, which those, who in our day are worse than infidels, represent as doctrines, in order that it may be possible to deny them. The family titles are those by which God reveals His relation to us and ours to Him; and to misinterpret them is to obscure revelation in its very terms. The human affections are the living figures by which we are to be taught to comprehend and feel those which are divine. The performance of natural duties, and the possession of natural knowledge, constitute and indicate that "honest and good heart," which we are told is not the fruit of the seed of faith, but the ground in which it must be sown, in order to come to perfection. Now the relation of husband and wife, besides being the first and strongest of human ties, is the source from which they all spring; and a miscomprehension of the nature of the primary relation necessarily involves error in the understanding of those which are derivative. In conclusion, let us thank M. Cousin for a series of worksfor each of these four volumes is a "work" in a sense in which few books are so now-which will probably bring him quite as much credit as his graver performances. We have met with few volumes, in which the history of France during the time of Louis XIII. and the Regency can be so agreeably and safely studied, by one who already knows something of the subject, as in these. They contain the fruits of many years' research, pursued with enthusiasm, and now put forth with simplicity and integrity. The style of M. Cousin is perfectly free from the epigrammatic and antithetical cleverness which casts suspicion upon the writings of some even of the soundest of modern French writers. We rise from the perusal of these volumes with the liveliest impressions of the characters of Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIII., Anne of Austria, Condé, La Rochefoucauld, and many others; but there is little or none of the set character-painting of which French writers are commonly so fond. The effects are all made by an honest rendering of facts. To the professed historian, the most valuable portions of these publications will be the voluminous appendices, consisting of unpublished documents, for the most part of high interest. ART. IV. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1853. Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations, and Fragments. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1854. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Captain Thomas Medwin. 1847. AFTER the long biography of Moore, it is half a comfort to think of a poet as to whom our information is but scanty. The few intimates of Shelley seem inclined to go to their graves without telling in accurate detail the curious circumstances of his life. We are left to be content with vague "prefaces" and the circumstantial details of a remarkable blunderer. We know something, however;—we know enough to check our inferences from his writings; in some moods it is pleasant not to have them disturbed by long volumes of memoirs and anecdotes. One peculiarity of Shelley's writing makes it natural that at times we should not care to have, that at times we should wish for, a full biography. No writer has left so clear an image of himself in his writings; when we remember them as a whole, we seem to want no more. No writer, on the other hand, has left so many little allusions which we should be glad to have ex plained, which the patient patriarch would not perhaps have endured that any one should comprehend while he did not. The reason is, that Shelley has combined the use of the two great modes by which writers leave with their readers the image of themselves. There is the art of self-delineation. Some authors try in imagination to get outside themselves-to contemplate their character as a fact, and to describe it and the movement of their own actions as external forms and images. Scarcely any one has done this as often as Shelley. There is hardly one of his longer works which does not contain a finished picture of himself in some point or under some circumstances. Again, some writers, almost or quite unconsciously, by a special instinct of style, give an idea of themselves. This is not peculiar to literary men; it is quite as remarkable among men of action. There are people in the world who cannot write the commonest letter on the commonest affair of business without giving a just idea of themselves. The Duke of Wellington is an example which at once occurs of this. You may read a despatch of his about bullocks and horseshoe-nails; and yet you will feel an interest— a great interest, because somehow among the words seems to lurk the mind of a great general. Shelley has this peculiarity also. Every line of his has a personal impress, an unconscious inimitable manner. And the two modes in which he gives an idea of himself concur. In every delineation we see the same simple intense being. As mythology found a Naiad in the course of every liquid stream, so through each eager line our fancy sees the same panting image of sculptured purity. Shelley's is probably the most remarkable instance of the pure impulsive character. Some men are born under the law: their whole life is a continued struggle between the lower principles of their nature and the higher. These are what are called men of principle; each of their best actions is a distinct choice between conflicting motives. One propension would bear them here; another there; a third would hold them still into the midst the living will goes forth in its power, and selects whichever it holds to be best. The habitual supremacy of conscience in such men gives them an idea that they only exert their will when they do right; when they do wrong they seem to "let their nature go;" they say that "they are hurried away:" but, in fact, there is commonly an act of will in both cases;-only it is weaker when they act ill, because in passably good men, if the better principles are reasonably strong, they conquer; it is only when very faint that they are vanquished. Yet the case is evidently not always so; sometimes the wrong principle is of itself and of set purpose definitely chosen. The very existence of divided natures is a conflict. This is no new description of human nature. For eighteen hundred years Christendom has been amazed at the description in St. Paul of the law of his members warring against the law of his mind. Expressions most unlike in language, but not dissimilar in meaning, are to be found in some of the most familiar passages of Aristotle. In extreme contrast to this is the nature which has no struggle. It is possible to conceive a character in which but one impulse is ever felt-in which the whole being, as with a single breeze, is carried in a single direction. The only exercise of the will in such a being is in aiding and carrying out the dictates of the single propensity. And this is something. There are many of our powers and faculties only in a subordinate degree under the control of the emotions; the intellect itself in many moments requires to be bent to defined attention by compulsion of the will; no mere intensity of desire will thrust it on its tasks. But of what in most men is the characteristic action of the will, -namely, self-control,—such natures are hardly in want. An ultimate case could be imagined in which they would not need it at all. They have no lower desires to pull down, for they have no higher ones which come into collision with them; the very words lower' and 'higher,' involving the contemporaneous action and collision of two impulses, are inapplicable to them; there is no strife; all their soul impels them in a single line. Of course this may be a quality of the highest character: indeed, in the highest character it will certainly be found; no one will question that the whole nature of the holiest being tends to what is holy without let, struggle, or strife-it would be impiety to doubt it. Yet this same quality may certainly be found in a lower-a much lower-mind than the highest. A level may be of any elevation; the absence of intestine commotion may arise from a sluggish dullness to eager aspirations; the one impulse which is felt may be any impulse whatever. If the idea were completely exemplified, one would instinctively say, that a being with so single a mind could hardly belong to human nature. Temptation is the mark of our life; we can hardly divest ourselves of the idea that it is indivisible from our character. As it was said of solitude, so it may be said of the sole dominion of a single impulse, "Whoso is devoted to it would seem to be either a beast or a god." Completely realised on earth this idea will never be; but approximations may be found, and one of the closest of those approximations is Shelley. We fancy his mind placed in the light of thought, with pure subtle fancies playing to and fro. On a sudden an impulse arises; it is alone, and has nothing to contend with; it cramps the intellect, pushes aside the fancies, constrains the nature; it bolts forward into action. Such a cha racter is an extreme puzzle to external observers. From the occasionality of its impulses it will often seem silly; from their singularity, strange; from their intensity, fanatical. It is absurdest in the more trifling matters. There is a legend of Shelley, during an early visit to London, flying along the street, catching sight of a new microscope, buying it in a moment; pawning it the instant afterwards to relieve some one in the same street in distress. The trait may be exaggerated, but it is characteristic. It shows the sudden irruption of his impulses, their abrupt force and curious purity. The predominant impulse in Shelley from a very early age was "a passion for reforming mankind." Mr. Newman has told us in his Letters from the East how much he and his half-missionary associates were annoyed at being called "young people trying to convert the world." In a strange land, ignorant of the language, beside a recognised religion, in the midst of an immemorial society, the aim, though in a sense theirs, seemed ridiculous when ascribed to them. Shelley would not have felt this at all. No society, however organised, would have been too strong for him to attack. He would not have paused. The impulse was upon him. He would have been ready to preach that mankind were to be "free, equal, pure, and wise,"-in favour of "justice, and truth, and time, and the world's natural sphere,”—in the Ottoman empire, or to the Czar, or to George III. Such truths were independent of time and place and circumstance; some time or other, something, or somebody, (his faith was a little vague) would most certainly intervene to establish them. It was this placid undoubting confidence which irritated the positive and sceptical mind of Hazlitt. "The author of the Prometheus Unbound,'" he tells us, "has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He is sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced. As is often observable in the case of religious enthusiasts, there is a slenderness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no strong hold of things, does not grapple with the world about him, but slides from it like a river And in its liquid texture mortal wound The shock of accident, the weight of authority, make no impression on his opinions, which retire like a feather, or rise from the encounter unhurt, through their own buoyancy. He is clogged by no dull system of realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothing that belongs to the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature and habit; but is drawn up by irresistible |