nature, because they teach us to understand | poet has shown us no other aspect and no it; and whether as a poet or a reformer, other attribute of his character. Beatrice is Shelley's capital defect was that he under- the personification merely of suffering and stood nothing so little. He sometimes shows unutterable wrong. But it did not lie in us a radiant world of dazzling arms, and Shelley's mind to depict any conflict of moglorious eyes, and floating locks; sometimes tives. Scruples and misgivings were all una gloomy region of pale murderers, and ly-known to him, and therefore they are uning ministers, and cruel priests; but in known to Beatrice. neither of these do we breathe the same atmosphere as that in which the human creatures of our actual earth live and work and have their being. His opinions accordingly are never applicable to the real concerns of living men.

If this view of Shelley's character as a purely impulsive one be correct; if he acted throughout without restraint on the impulses of the heart; that heart must have been a noble one, unless the evidence of all his friends who loved him is absolutely worthSuch a mind may be gifted with the high-less. But the good and the evil of his life est poetical genius, but it is evident that it were limited by his own disposition. If his differs as widely as possible from the all- impulse led him astray, he knew of no extercomprehensive spirit of the genius essen-nal law which demanded obedience in oppotially dramatic, and accordingly there is no sition to that. Therefore it was that when better illustration of the views we have ex- his affection for his wife had grown cold, or pressed than Shelley's tragedy of the been displaced by passionate love for an"Cenci." Of this play Lady Shelley as- other, she was abandoned without mercy. serts that it "comes nearer to Shakspeare He who has no fixed standard of morality than any other writer has approached since can have no insight into the real nature of Shakspeare's time." If this were merely a moral distinctions. This was conspicuously vague way of expressing admiration of the the case with Shelley. He is always conpoet's genius, it might well be justified by founding that which is right with that which appealing to the power with which the char- is merely customary, and anathematizing it acters of Beatrice and her father seize upon accordingly. And he gravely permits himour imagination, and the deep tragical effect self to say of the most infamous of all of their appalling story. But when a dram-crimes that it may be right or wrong acatist is said to come near Shakspeare, it is implied, we presume, that he has presented his characters and handled his story in the same manner as Shakspeare would have done; and no criticism of the "Cenci " could be more inaccurate. There are, indeed, many little touches throughout the poem which show a very careful study of Macbeth and King Lear. The scene where Beatrice and Lucrezia listen for Cenci's murder is an example. But Shelley's poem does not contain the elements in which his own nature was deficient, and these are precisely the ele-markable courage in exposing himself to inments for which Shakspeare's plays are most remarkable. He could not represent the conflicting passions by which men's souls are agitated who commit great crimes, or who revenge them, for his own undivided mind had never been the scene of a struggle. Shakspeare in his most passionate characters never fails to show the complexity of the human mind. Shelley deals with nothing but the essential passion. Cenci is the personification of wickedness, and the

cording to circumstances. "It may be the defiance of everything for the sake of another, which clothes itself in the glory of the highest heroism." He did not see that, whatever the defiance of human opinion may be, the defiance of a moral law can never be either glorious or heroic, and that the general condemnation of mankind can hardly make it so. He thought it was noble for a man to brave the opinion of men, without pausing to ask himself whether that opinion was right or wrong. His own re

vective was, perhaps, partly owing to this kind of oversight. It did not occur to him that the attacks of his antagonists might, by any possibility, be the honest expression of outraged morality and insulted faith. It was enough that they were a multitude and that he was alone. The mere circumstance of being abused was in his eyes a testimony to his worth. This was why he called himself an atheist. "I took up the word," he said, "as a knight took up a gauntlet."

The one remains, the many change and pass,
Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass
fly,
Stains the white radiance of eternity
Until death tramples it to fragments.-Die
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost
seek,
Follow where all is fled.-Rome, azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to
speak!"

We must not leave the subject, however, without saying that this word is inapplicable to his later opinions. He soon became dissatisfied with the materialism which we have seen him expressing at Oxford, and which he erroneously attributed to Locke. It was this materialism which conducted him to atheism, by very intelligible stages, and it is not to be supposed that he retained the religious doctrine much longer than the philosophy on which it was founded. Even This, as far as we can gather, was his final in "Queen Mab" there are indications of religious creed (if indeed we are justified in the very different belief of which his later ascribing to him any serious convictions at writings are full-a belief that, instead of all), and this plastic spirit is the nearest apannihilating Divinity, finds Divinity in every-proach he seems to have attained to the idea thing. The peculiar modification of panthe- of a personal God. Indeed, if we are at all ism which he adopted is difficult to grasp, right in what we have said hitherto, one and we think it by no means necessary that path, at least, which leads from man to God, we should try to explain it. It will be bet- must necessarily have been closed to Shelter, we think, to quote from "Adonaïs," one of the most intelligible, and certainly one of the most musical expressions of this faith:

"Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not
sleep-

He hath awakened from the dream of life-
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings.

He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone
Threading itself where'er that power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own:
Which wields the world with never wearied
love,

Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely: he doth

bear

ley. It seemed a melancholy thing to Shelley that men should hate their crimes, or repent of them; he could not understand the sacredness of law, or the beauty of obedience; and thus, when the idea of a Supreme Ruler presented itself to his mind, he could only think of him as an omnipotent tyrant, hostile to human liberty and human right, and rejoicing over the wickedness and suffering of mankind. It would be easy to prove this, but it would be still more painful; and no reader of Shelley's poetry can have overlooked the audacity with which this view is expressed. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to believe with Moore and De Quincey that he was in reality capable of loving that religion which he insanely hated. And we know that, though he saw no Divinity in its founder, he had come to understand that it was in Him that the spirit of love and self-sacrifice he thought so noble had found its highest development on earth. We may be permitted to believe that had he not been cut off so early, he might have advanced one step further, and have embraced the faith he rejected-the faith which ought to have transmuted his vague yearnings for the knowledge of a Central Power and an all-pervading Spirit, into knowledge and love of the Most High.

From The Boston Daily Advertiser, 4 Nov.

LIEUT.-GENERAL SCOTT.

any

active ser

cute his plans untramelled by an administration half timid and half treacherous, he It is now about one year since General threw such a force into the forts at Key Scott removed his head-quarters from New West and the Tortugas as to secure the posYork to Washington, at the sounding of the session of these important strongholds,-pofirst note of alarm in this contest. He was sitions which it would be worth a war to rethen far advanced in his seventy-fifth year, gain if lost, and which he nailed so firmly incapacitated by injuries for that no life has been sacrificed in the hopevice, but with a bodily frame still so vigor- less folly of attempting their reduction. ous as to promise years of usefulness in his Surrounded by a network of treasonable ordinary routine of labor, with a mind un-plots, and with the scantiest means at his shaken by age, a judgment as acute as ever, disposal, he preserved the peace of the capand a reputation for single-minded integrity ital and the safety of the nation at the critiand for military sagacity, which was in it-cal moment of counting the electoral votes, self a tower of strength. At that time it and at the inauguration of the new President. seemed possible that, even if our troubles The superb combination, however, which took the worst development as now,-which he effected at the breaking out of the war, with common honesty and prudence on the and which at this moment is hardly remempart of the executive could be avoided, bered, will shine in the history of the war the veteran general might be able to con- as the salvation of the country. The moveclude this his last war, and to carry the coun- ment for the relief of Fort Sumter-which try through it with the success of which his it was foreseen could have only one resultlife of victories gave such proud assurance. distracted attention from an expedition which The prodigious complication of our difficul-placed Fort Pickens forever beyond the reach ties caused by the criminal policy of Mr. of the rebels, and neutralized their acquisiBuchanan, could not then be foreseen. The tion at Pensacola, while they were still immense burden of care and responsibility elated with foolish delight at the fall of devolved upon the general-in-chief exceeded Sumter. The first available troops in the all possible expectation; and thus it happens that the old general finds himself broken down by a twelvemonth of the severest labors of his life, and forced to retire from the service in which he has worn out his aged frame, leaving his task unfinished, and his loved country simply provided with the means for prosecuting a war, which is yet to be brought to a successful termination. When the history of the war is finally written, however, it will appear that to General Scott belongs the merit of having performed what may then be seen to have been its hardest task. Another will restore the government to its former empire; it was he that saved it, and arrested the work of ruin when it was visibly crumbling to pieces. It will be recorded to his honor, that before our troubles openly broke out, he advised an imbecile executive to take the very steps, which would have nipped the treason in the bud.

Subsequently, he advised the sending of such additional forces to Charleston as would have insured our possession of the harbor forts, but was met by a resolution to "avoid excitement." At the earliest moment when it was possible for him to exe

days of hot haste and panic which followed were thrown into Fortress Monroe, and another great strategic point was forever lost for the rebels. Cairo was instantly occupied in the West; and Missouri found herself in an iron grasp which she will never shake off, while the whole South-west trembled at the danger of a descent by the Federal forces through the Mississippi valley. Nor must it be forgotten that so early as to be almost a part of the same system of operations, our troops were sent into Western Virginia to secure a district which was loyal at heart, and to interpose a barrier between the rebellion and the Ohio River. Even had Washington fallen in those weeks of danger, the Government would still have had a firm hold upon those great positions, the mastery of which must settle the issue of the war. The sagacity of the great soldier had provided for the security of these, and his anxious thoughts were given to the execution of this vast combination, at a moment when all others were lost in dread of the supposed approach of an enemy who, as he had rightly calculated, could not then be in a position to move upon the capital.