is no need to double the risks, as they are doubled and trebled to poor people's children-that class upon which society depends mainly for health, labour, and industry. Any person of common sense, during an hour's walk along the streets of London or any large town, will have sufficient evidence on this subject. Now, it seems pretty well agreed upon by modern philanthropists, that if we are to mend the world at all, it must be through the new generation; for the old, God help it! is almost hopeless to meddle with; and in the balance of advantages, it is wiser to expend labour over a young tree, than on one which, toil as you will, you can seldom straighten out of the crookedness of years, or graft with pleasant fruit upon a long sour stem. Still, we are bound to 'dig about it and dung it,' as the good Master allows; but let us not for its sake neglect the growing trees which spring up around us on every side. Apparently, there is more hope in Ragged, Industrial, National, or even Infant Schools-in teaching establishments of every sort and kind, religious or secular-than in all our prisons, workhouses, reformatories, and penitentiaries.

The great want in this admirable movement for the benefit of the young, is its being almost exclusively on the teaching system. However varied be the instruction, and the mode in which it is imparted, the chorus of it is always 'Teach-teach-teach.'

Now, children do not need teaching every day, and all day long; any more than a tree requires perpetual watering, pruning, propping, and manuring; and Providence never meant any such thing. Set it in the ground, and let it grow. It will grow in spite of you; and the best you can do is to watch it that it grows straightly and safely-defend it from all noxious influences; but on the whole, leave it in its early season of development to the dews, and sunshine, and fresh air; and meddle with it as little as you can.

And thus we should never forget how equal with all learning, and often before it-for education can be gained in very mature life—is to children that indispensable blessing, play: safe, well-watched, harmless, and properly restricted, but daily play. Not doled out in ten-minute portions between hours of lessons; or according to Miss Monflathers' creed for 'poor' ehildren

In work, work, work. In work alway

Let their first years be passedbut granted as an indispensable and very large item in their sum of existence. Poor little souls-why not? it is but a tiny sum, after all; a dozen years or so, at best. As says Christophero Sly:

Let the world wag, we shall ne'er be younger. Perhaps even well-to-do parents scarcely think enough of this great necessity of play for their little ones, boys and girls both, up to as long a period as possible; which will be short enough with most. Alas! well do I myself remember the last evening that ever I put on my blue pinafore and went out to play.' Of these respectable fathers and mothers I am not now speaking; but of the fathers and mothers -not less tender and scrupulous, often-of workingpeople's children.

Schools are excellent things; but when a child is turned out of school, to a home which is probably only a single room, or two rooms-where labour and sickness, misery, drunkenness, or want, make it worse than no home at all-where does he go to? To play, of course; but where? In filthy alleys, making mud-pies-swimming boats along open sewers-busy at hop-scotch on pavements, or pitchand-toss at street-corners; darting under horses' heads and carriage-wheels; exposed all day to the policeman's collaring, the errand-boy's 'whopping;' and

half the night to the foul-mouthed 'rows' which take place at gin-palace doors; open, in short, to every sort and kind of bodily harm and mental corruption. You, fond and gentle mother, who send your children out for a walk, or into the safe garden, under the guardianship of two nursery-maids, or on wet days have them for a game in the dining-room, and at eight o'clock every night go up to kiss them in their little beds-only fancy your boys and girls turned out for one single day of such a life as this!

Can anything be done to remedy it?-anything which, without detracting a jot from the usefulness of schools, will provide for a want which no schools || can supply?

A society, lately started, has tried to answer this question. It is called "The Playground Society,' and its object is to provide playgrounds for poor children in populous places.' Its originator, a benevolent London clergyman, thus states how the scheme arose the paragraph is taken from a private letter, which, for public good, there can be no objection to make public:

"The immediate impulse to our Society came from a little street in my late district, wherein I found a woman "blowing up " some little boys well for making a noise before her house. I entered into a conversation with her upon my wish to have a playground set apart for poor children who had no room to play at home, and must play somewhere. She replied “that the idea was a good one, because then they would not trouble her." Feeling, therefore, that all classes were to benefit by the movement, I began to look up friends to the cause, and a good many were found. We hope to be more useful by assisting in the conveyance of sites, than by their purchase. We do not propose to do more than procure the playground, leaving the management to local authorities.'

Therefore, the brief prospectus urges 'support from the nobility and gentry, with reference to the towns and cities contiguous to their estates;' and invites such earnestly to make 'grants of land, which can be legally conveyed for that purpose.' We feel that we are perhaps affording one chance more to a substantial public good in giving in this Journal the address of this Society-17 Bull and Mouth Street, St Martin's-le-Grand, London.'

Thus, with a plea for playgrounds and for play, end these reminiscences of our play-days-now gone by for evermore. Yet blessed are those families, however dwindled and separated, who are bound together in heart by remembrances such as these! And blessed is the memory of those parents, who, by justice, patience, forbearance, and tenderness-tried, how sorely none find out until taught by parenthood themselves have through all afflictions of their own given to their children that blessing, which nothing afterwards can take away, and the want of which nothing can ever supply, the recollection of a happy childhood.

SHELLEY AND HIS WRITINGS.* FOR more than a quarter of a century, Shelley has been a sort of myth to the British public, and a myth, moreover, with two very different characters. By a few, he has been regarded as an angel, but by the majority as a sort of malignant demon, muttering perpetually necromantic incantations, to blast the tillers and the fruits of the earth. A friend who knew him well once went down to visit him while he was staying at Great Marlow. Shelley, like Rousseau, lived his whole life in the full persuasion that all mankind were habitually engaged in talking about him. After the usual civilities, he exclaimed,

* By Charles S. Middleton. 2 vols. London: Newby, 1858.

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therefore, in his strange, sepulchral voice: Well, what do they say of me now?' The man of town replied: They say you are engaged in blaspheming as usual.' Shelley, evidently delighted, rejoined, in his most animated manner: Tell them I have run away with my grandmother-that I entertain peculiar notions about the iron railings in Lincoln's Inn Fields-and that I worship the mystery of the devil's tail!'

By talking this sort of ranting stuff, the young poet shocked a great number of persons, while he amused others. It would have been fortunate had he contented himself with shocking people's nerves in conversation only; but he delighted in doing the thing on a larger scale, and wrote several books for the same purpose. Had his life been protracted to the threescore years and ten supposed to be allotted to us for spinning speculations and sundry other duties, these fantastic tricks of youth might have been thrown completely into oblivion by the conduct and writings of his riper age; but Shelley died before public attention had been withdrawn from his intellectual frolics; and it is therefore to be feared that many generations must pass away before he can be viewed in the proper light. To hasten the consummation so devoutly to be wished, is the object of Mr Middleton's two interesting volumes.

There is nothing new in saying that a great majority of the human race are fond of indulging in severe criticisms on the few who are endowed with the remarkable powers of genius. The reason is by no means difficult to be discovered. Swift celebrates it in the following lines:

I have no title to aspire;

Yet if you sink, I seem the higher. Without being actuated at all by this motive, we will venture to say that poor Shelley did furnish people with many strong reasons for speaking against him. He was mad occasionally, and occasionally sane; but habitually fluctuated between these two states of being, and acted wildly or outrageously simply because he could not help it. His very physical organisation suggested at once to the beholder the idea of something strange and inexplicable. He had the face and delicate figure of a girl, with light-blue eyes, fair skin, and flaxen hair, and the voice of a very old woman, cracked, broken, and tremulous. When excited, his scream was unearthly. This, whether right or wrong, was the cause why the boys delighted in tormenting him at school. It amused them to make him frantic, and they listened with a mixture of fear and wonder to the thin, weak, though infuriated voice of eld, issuing from those delicate rosy lips, which might have been expected to give birth to the softest and sweetest sounds. It is Mr Middleton's determination to take part with Shelley in almost everything, and accordingly he is very severe upon the boys for the system of persecution they carried on at Brentford against the young poet; but we have never known any school in which so queer a little elf as Shelley then was would not have excited what Mr Middleton calls persecution. It was not the poet's fault; it was his misfortune that he was weak and timid, given to mooning about in solitude, and averse from the sports which amused and occupied the other boys. At school, as in the world, respect is paid to the possessor of power; and the only power which boys understand being that which confers victory in fighting, they could not avoid feeling a contempt for Shelley, who possessed nothing of the virtue which excited their admiration. The power that really was in him, they could not be expected to perceive. Neither could the master. He only knew by experience that he had to do with a wayward, fretful, fanciful, and unintelligible boy, who, when he should

have applied himself to his lessons, was always thinking of something else.

The same frailty of organisation led to most of the irregularities of Shelley's after-life, as well as to many of his out-of-the-way notions. He appeared to be reasoning with the world thus: You think because I avoid the shocks of physical force and the rough jostling of men in ordinary society, that I possess no courage. I will prove to you the contrary. I will fly in the face of public opinion; I will set at nought the notions of mankind; I will assail what they respect; I will recommend for practice what they detest; I will throw an irresistible charm around loathsome things. I will confuse-I will overthrow, and thus compel you to recognise the intrepidity of my nature.'

From the whole tenor of Shelley's career, we are convinced that this was the secret theory of his actions. By nature he was gentle and compassionate, generous, and full of charity. But he had no regulating principle in his mind; or rather, if he had, it was that overweening vanity which led him to derive supreme satisfaction from talking, thinking, and acting differently from other men. In whatever form of society he had lived, he would have selected the most unpopular opinions, and become a martyr to them. Hazlitt used to say of Coleridge that he had a knack of always preferring the unknown to the known. With Shelley, it was not the unknown, but that which was generally detested. He seemed to reason with his contemporaries as Slender does with Sweet Anne Page. 'You are afraid if you see the bears loose, are you not?' Anne. 'Ay, indeed, sir. Slender. That's meat and drink to me, now: I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times; and have taken him by the chain: but I warrant you the women have so cried and shrieked at it, that it passed.'

This was Shelley all over. He had not only seen the Sackerson of opinion loose twenty times, but had let him loose, merely that he might have the pleasure of taking him by the chain while all the world stood looking on and shrieking. But if the young poet was absurd to seek pleasure from these antics, were his contemporaries much wiser in raising such an outcry as they did? Had they ceased to scream, he would have ceased to take the bear by the chain. Any man, with a man's brains in his head, might have perceived that Shelley was a mad boy, playing with dangerous opinions, because it excited the world's attention. He was not a philosopher launching forth a new system to influence the reasonings and the thoughts of mankind for ever; but a young man of vivid imagination, rich fancy, and distorted intellect, blowing gorgeous bubbles for their entertainment. He had an instrument at his command which would occasionally discourse most elegant music, but suddenly fly off into sharps and discords, grating most harshly upon the ear. In the way of opinion, there is nothing whatever that is new in Shelley. He had groped among the ruins of the past, and picked up a number of strange ideas, which he draped fantastically after the modern fashion. It was ridiculous, therefore, to look upon him as a teacher of men. He required to be taught himself, and was only urged by the pardonable impetuosity of youth to set himself up as the antagonist of established opinions and principles. Unhappily, he found much older and graver persons ready to encourage him in the attempt to reduce his dreams to practice. Being the heir of a wealthy family, he could always, though for the time an outcast, obtain sufficient money, not only to provide for his own wants, but to give generously to others, and occasionally even to play the fool with it. We can hardly expend any great amount of pity on the pecuniary embarrassments of a young man who could make paper-boats

of fifty-pound notes, and set them floating across the Serpentine.

In the matter of ethics, Shelley's practice was not much more respectable than his theory. His conduct towards his first wife is susceptible of no defence; it was heartless and unprincipled. Of many other acts of his life we must likewise disapprove, though we are willing to give their full weight to all those circumstances which are urged by Mr Middleton in extenuation. After making all possible allowance, however, for the faults of others towards him, for the evil influences which were exerted over his mind, for the wickedness of his parents, for the pernicious counsel and example of his friends, we must still insist that Shelley's life was very far indeed from being an exemplary one. He did many kind and many noble actions-where the goods of fortune were concerned, he was in a high degree unselfish; he cheerfully underwent discomforts and privations that he might relieve the minds and the sufferings of others; he was profuse in his generosity towards his friends, and even the most complete strangers often partook of his indiscriminate bounty. Carefully considering, therefore, both the good and the evil, we are forced to the common-place conclusion that Shelley's was a mixed character-partly blamable, partly praiseworthy. The events of his life, however, were varied, strange, and interesting. He was born in a delightful part of Sussex, where, in the midst of opulence and splendour, he passed the early years of his life. But even his childhood could scarcely have been happy. Both his father and mother would appear to have been coarse, vulgar, worldly-minded individuals, no more qualified to comprehend the mind of their gifted son, than to achieve the quadrature of the circle. Even his sisters, of whom the biographer speaks kindly, may be suspected of not having been endowed with any wonderful amount of sympathy. At all events, they soon disappear from the narrative of Shelley's life, and take refuge in complete oblivion. In the selection of friends, Shelley displayed, from the commencement, very little tact or discernment-Medwin, Hogg, Godwin, Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Byron-all were individuals more or less at war with society. At Eton, the agreeable qualities of Shelley's mind were so completely overbalanced by the disagreeable, that he made no friends, and carried away no agreeable reminiscences. At Oxford, he contracted only one friendship, that of Mr Hogg, which was obviously more prejudicial to him than otherwise. Instead of checking his tendency to what was extravagant and offensive, his new companion joined him in his vagaries, and strongly encouraged that course of study which rendered him hostile to the leading principles of his age. At the same time, it must be owned that the plan of instruction then pursued at the university was not only imperfect, but cold, dull, and mischievous. The superiors of his own college were preeminently unfit to be intrusted with the training and disciplining of youth. They were ignorant, harsh, ill-tempered, and bigoted; and instead of dealing gently and compassionately, as they ought, with the errors and aberrations of youth, they brought to bear against him all the fierce fanaticism of narrow minds, and expelled him from the college.

Shelley's parents, instead of receiving and consoling him, as good parents would have done, joined the hue-and-cry raised against him by his enemies. He was thus rendered an Ishmaelite, and precipitated into an internecine war with society. He became a wanderer upon the earth-married rashly, took to opium-eating, borrowed money of Jews, visited Scotland, Ireland, Wales, fought like Don Quixote with imaginary assailants, deserted his wife, and then went to sit down and read quietly at the British Museum.

At this time, he became acquainted with Godwin, whose singular character and ultra opinions possessed a powerful fascination for the young poet, who now launched forth Queen Mab as a sort of desperate manifesto against all the received opinions of mankind. This was the one fatal step in Shelley's literary career which inaugurated all his subsequent errors. The reader of Gil Blas will recollect the instructive story of Dr Sangrado. On the occasion of an epidemic at Valladolid, Gil Blas observing that his master's patients went the way of all flesh with startling rapidity, ventured one day to advise a reconsideration of his practice. Truly, Gil,' replied the doctor, 'the perverse alacrity of these people in dying perplexes me also not a little. But you see I have written a book in which our mode of treatment is maintained to be the best.' 'In that case,' answered Gil, 'perish all Valladolid rather than you should recant. So, adds the historian, we went to work again; and in less than six weeks made more widows and orphans than the siege of Troy.

Like the doctor, Shelley had now written a book, and fancied that his honour was concerned to defend it. For several years, therefore, the fairy Mab acted like his evil genius, and betrayed him into all sorts of Quixotic enterprises. But the rich and beautiful character of his genius could not be entirely misdirected. From time to time, he produced poems of great splendour and originality; and even in the most dreary of his epics, there were passages so exquisite, so fresh, so saturated with the influences of external nature, that his worst enemies could hardly refuse to recognise their transcendent merit.

With his second wife, the daughter of Mr Godwin, Shelley now went abroad, traversed France, Switzerland, Italy, and pitched his tent at last in the sweet valley of the Arno. There, in ancient Pisa, his name is still remembered, even by the common people, who will point out to you with pleasure the house in which he dwelt under the frowning Apennine. Visible, full in front between the rocks, is that fatal blue sea in which he was destined to perish. Generally, especially in summer, it looks like a huge expanse of molten amethyst or turquoise, sleeping serenely beneath the sun. But in winter, a sudden boreasco, a strong north wind, or even the Homeric zephyr, will blow it up into a chaos of spray and foam.

Here Shelley remained for a considerable time, though not without frequent removes and residences elsewhere. He passed some time on the Lake of Como, at Florence, Rome, or Naples; but generally returned in a short time to Pisa, where he loved to meditate in the shadow of the Campanile, among the ashes of the Campo Santo, or on the half-deserted Lungarno. The influence of the climate and scenery produced ‘a pleasant change in Shelley's mind; he became less harsh, less fretful, less inclined to social Quixotism. But his imagination was diseased, and loved to revel, amid the triumphs of decay and death, on the verge of moral obliquity, sin, crime, hideousness, and horror. For what was genuinely healthy in mind or body, he had no sympathy. His Parnassus was dark, and peopled with frightful phantoms; his Helicon was the black pool of melancholy; his Muses, the Eumenides, whose voices of terror howl around the criminal, as they track and chase him to his doom. During his whole life, Shelley never was happy; he had a never-failing well-spring of bitterness within. He could create gorgeous pictures; he could delight the fancy with transient scenes, beautiful as Eden; he could diffuse splendour over the desert; he could call up visions of female loveliness, and place them in gardens which rivalled the Hesperides-but

Full in the fount of joy's delicious springs,
Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.

Accordingly, to follow Shelley's track through life is like reading a Greek tragedy. You always feel that there is an invisible being moving beside you, which throws its shadow over your mind. For this reason, you are never easy, never taste anything with confidence, never yield yourself up to the joyousness of the passing hour. On the contrary, you hold your breath, you look about you, you listen to catch, if possible, the stealthy steps of Nemesis, as she approaches from behind. Whether you hear them or not, you know she is there, watching you everlastingly, and as you raise the goblet to your lips, ready to strike you down in the midst of your pleasures. By a species of second-sight, you look forward, and behold the boat upon the gulf, the thick evening clouds, the mounting waves; and then, upon the sea-shore, a knot of friends about a funeral-pile, and an urn, filled with ashes and burned bones.

Mr Middleton, through strong admiration for Shelley and his writings, has become an advocate and apologist. He tells the poet's story interestingly and well; he attacks his enemies with vehemence, and shews all his actions and his friends in the best possible light. This renders his volumes very agreeable to read, but we are by no means disposed to accept all his conclusions. In the matter of opinion, he proves, we think, clearly enough, that Shelley, ere he died, was passing through that phase of intellectual existence, so admirably described by a Roman poet, and not badly interpreted by an Englishman:

A fugitive from heaven and prayer,

I mocked at all religious fear,
Deep scienced in the mazy lore
Of mad philosophy. But now

Hoist sail, and back my voyage plough

To that blest harbour which I left before.

Great instruction may be derived from an attentive study of Shelley's life. That he possessed genius of a very high order, no one, we fancy, will be inclined to dispute. It seems to be equally clear that he was gifted with many excellent qualities-that he was benevolent, charitable, a lover of knowledge, and a lover of freedom. What, then, did he want to render him happy himself, and a source of happiness to others? Common sense. He partook of an opinion very widely diffused in modern times, that genius is not amenable to the laws which regulate the proceedings of ordinary individuals. An acquaintance with the history of literature might have taught him to think differently. The greatest intellectual powers ever ingrafted upon human nature have claimed no exemption for themselves from the common duties and observances of life. Shakspeare and Milton, Eschylus and Homer, breathe throughout their writings obedience to the great universal code of ethics which we must allow to guide our conduct, if we would taste of happiness. A man, whatever may be his poetical faculties, can never be contemplated as merely a poet: he is the citizen of some state, he is the son of some father, he is the husband of some wife, he is the father of some children; he has friends, he has acquaintances, he has contemporaries in literature, he has competitors for fame. In all these relations, he has duties to perform, and must perform them, or make up his account to be unhappy. If Shelley's whole career be examined, he will be found to have performed scarcely one duty as he ought. If his parents were bad, it will hardly be contended that, making all due allowance for that circumstance, he was a good son. He certainly was not a good husband, or a good father. What he was as a brother, we hardly know; but, if we must draw any inference at all, it is, that he was by no means exemplary. Towards his friends, he seemed always to have behaved generously, and, for the most part, much

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better than they deserved, because the cardinal error of his life was the choice of those very friends. He should have borne in mind the immemorial adage: Shew me your familiars, and I will tell you what you are.' To say the best, there was not one of them desirable. To the poor, Shelley invariably behaved with kindness and sympathy. He felt keenly for misfortune, and detested oppression of all kinds. He was ready at any hour of the day or night to sally forth and make sacrifices and succour the needy. Upon this point, Mr Middleton very properly insists, as it ought to be taken into account when we are drawing up our estimate of Shelley's character. His works, however, and his life are now before us, and whatever may be the design with which we sit down to examine them, we shall be inevitably influenced by our own idiosyncrasies. The fanciful and imaginative will be inclined to be lenient; the affectionate, the impassioned, the impetuous, will probably condemn; the calm and philosophical will award a portion of blame and praise, according to the quality of the actions and writings they review. But friends and enemies, admirers and detractors, the poetical and the unpoetical, must acknowledge that his life was singularly checkered, strange, and full of vicissitudes. From the cradle to the grave, he was in perpetual troubles, difficulties, embarrassments, misfortunes, dangers, and his existence was at last terminated by a fierce and pitiless storm.

OÇEOLA:

A ROMANCE.

CHAPTER XXXIV.-A PRETTY PLOT.

To dispute the identity was to doubt the evidence of my senses. The mulatto was before me-just as I remembered him-though with changed apparel, and perhaps grown a little bigger in body. But the features were the same-the tout ensemble the same, as that presented by Yellow Jake, the ci devant woodman of our plantation.

And yet how could it possibly be he? And in the company of Arens Ringgold too, one of the most active of his intended executioners? No, no, no! altogether improbable-utterly impossible! Then must I be deluded-my eyes deceiving me-for as certain as I looked upon man, I was looking upon Jake the mulatto! He was not twenty feet from where I lay hidden; his face was full towards me; the moon was shining upon it with a brilliancy scarcely inferior to the light of day. I could note the old expression of evil in his eyes, and mark the play of his features. It was Yellow Jake.

To confirm the impression, I remembered that, notwithstanding all remonstrance and ridicule, the black pertinaciously adhered to his story. He would listen to no compromise, no hypothesis founded upon resemblance. He had seen Yellow Jake, or his ghost. This was his firm belief, and I had been unable to shake it.

Another circumstance I now remembered: the strange behaviour of the Ringgolds during the postprandial conversation-the action of Arens when I mentioned the mulatto's name. It had attracted my attention at the time, but what was I to think now? Here was a man supposed to be dead, in company of three others who had been active in assisting at his death-one of them the very keenest of his executioners, and all four now apparently as thick as thieves! How was I to explain, in one moment, this wonderful resurrection and reconciliation?

I could not explain it-it was too complicated a mystery to be unravelled by a moment's reflection; and I should have failed, had not the parties themselves soon after aided me to an elucidation.