all-embracing devotion to his fellow-men. There is something inevitably
chilling in the words "benevolence" and "philanthropy." A disillusioned
world is inclined to look with languid approbation on the former, and to
disbelieve in the latter. Therefore I will not use them to describe that
intense and glowing passion of unselfishness, which throughout his life
led Shelley to find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows of
his fellow-creatures, which inflamed his imagination with visions of
humanity made perfect, and which filled his days with sweet deeds of
unnumbered charities. I will rather collect from the page of his
friend's biography a few passages recording the first impression of his
character, the memory of which may be carried by the reader through the
following brief record of his singular career:--

"His speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty-one years has
shown them to be; but the zealous earnestness for the augmentation of
knowledge, and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence that
marked them, and beamed forth in the whole deportment of that
extraordinary boy, are not less astonishing than they would have been if
the whole of his glorious anticipations had been prophetic; for these
high qualities, at least, I have never found a parallel."

"In no individual perhaps was the moral sense ever more completely
developed than in Shelley; in no being was the perception of right and
of wrong more acute.

"As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour of
his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life
most conspicuous."

"I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom the