not take the
priority which long-established custom had awarded it, nor the other
overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious
that either part can assume to have been the principal agent in the
affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was
nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other. There
was no period of throes and resolute explanation attendant on the tale.
It was friendship melting into love."

Mary was now happier than she had ever been before in her life. She
wrote to a friend: "My bark has at last glided out upon the smooth
waters. Married to a man whom I respect, revere and love, who
understands my highest flights of fancy, and with whom complete
companionship exists, my literary success assured, and the bugaboo of
poverty at last removed, you can imagine how serene is my happiness."
But this time of joy was to be short.

She died three months later, September Tenth, Seventeen Hundred
Ninety-seven, leaving behind her a baby girl eleven days old.

This girl, grown to womanhood, was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife of
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and without whom the name of Shelley would be to
us unknown.

In writing of the mother who died in giving her birth, Mary Shelley
says: "Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those rare beings who appear once,
perhaps, in a generation, to gild humanity with a ray which no
difference of opinion nor chance of circumstance can cloud. Her genius
was undeniable. She had been bred in the hard school of adversity, and
having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and oppressed, an
earnest desire was kindled within her to diminish these sorrows.

"Her sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility and eager
sympathy, stamped all her writings with force and truth, and endowed
them with a tender charm that enchants while it enlightens. Many years
have passed since that beating heart has been laid in the cold, still
grave, but no one who has ever seen her speaks of her without
enthusiastic love and veneration. Was there discord among friends or
relatives, she stood by the weaker party, and by her earnest appeals and
kindliness awoke latent affection, and healed all wounds. Open as day to
melting charity, with a heart brimming with generous affection, yearning
for sympathy, helpful, hopeful and self-reliant, such was Mary
Wollstonecraft." And here let us leave her.

DANTE AND BEATRICE

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