ophic, if
impassioned seriousness.

An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of
handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. I
have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:--

"Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To
attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is
capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to
this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible
definition of his nature.

"It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the
perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the moral qualities
of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of
corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot
possess.... But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable
old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various
passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and
uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are
qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he
disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecution
for opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers
of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their
fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those
which they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors
who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone
act consonantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in
his name."

Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him. The
sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season.
Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he
found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving
any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously
described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following
year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established
at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to
Mr. W.A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a
considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with
an embankment. Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him was
always