secure the service of a professional king. These gentlemen are plentiful
in Europe. They are the "noble Chairmen" who lend their names for a
consideration to any enterprising company which may be speculating in
Liberty. When we see these things, we revert to the old lines in which
Persius tells how you cannot turn Dama into a freeman by twirling him
round your finger and calling him Marcus Dama.

Again, Shelley desired a religion of humanity, and that meant, to him, a
religion for humanity, a religion which, unlike the spectral Christianity
about him, should permeate and regulate the whole organisation of men.
And the feeling is one with which a Catholic must sympathise, in an age
when--if we may say so without irreverence--the Almighty has been made a
constitutional Deity, with certain state-grants of worship, but no
influence over political affairs. In these matters his aims were
generous, if his methods were perniciously mistaken. In his theory of
Free Love alone, borrowed like the rest from the Revolution, his aim was
as mischievous as his method. At the same time he was at least logical.
His theory was repulsive, but comprehensible. Whereas from our present
_via media_--facilitation of divorce--can only result the era when the
young lady in reduced circumstances will no longer turn governess but
will be open to engagement as wife at a reasonable stipend.

We spoke of the purity of Shelley's poetry. We know of but three
passages to which exception can be taken. One is happily hidden under a
heap of Shelleian rubbish. Another is offensive, because it presents his
theory of Free Love in its most odious form. The third is very much a
matter, we think, for the individual conscience. Compare with this the
genuinely corrupt Byron, through the cracks and fissures of whose heaving
versification steam up perpetually the sulphurous vapours from his
central iniquity. We cannot credit that any Christian ever had his faith