d of this new species of
intellectual dandyism, the evil has been daily and even hourly
increasing; and so prodigious is the progressive ratio of its march,
that the _worthy_ Society for the Suppression of Vice should be called
upon to eradicate it. It now no longer masks its real intentions under
affected purity of sentiment; its countenance has recently acquired a
considerable addition of brass, the glitter of which has often been
mistaken for sterling coin, and incest, adultery, murder, blasphemy, are
among other favorite topics of its discussion. It seems to delight in an
utter perversion of all moral, intellectual, and religious qualities. It
gluts over the monstrous deformities of nature; finds gratification in
proportion to the magnitude of the crime it extolls; and sees no virtue
but in vice; no sin, but in true feeling. Like poor Tom, in Lear, whom
the foul fiend has possessed for many a day, it will run through
ditches, through quagmires, and through bogs, to see a man stand on his
head for the exact space of half an hour. Ask the reason of this raging
appetite for eccentricity, the answer is, such a thing is out of the
beaten track of manhood, _ergo_, it is praiseworthy.

Among the professors of the Cockney school, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y
is one of the most conspicuous. With more fervid imagination and
splendid talents than nine-tenths of the community, he yet prostitutes
those talents by the utter degradation to which he unequivocally
consigns them. His Rosalind and Helen, his Revolt of Islam, and his
Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, while they possess beauties of a
superior order, are lamentably deficient in morality and religion. The
doctrines they inculcate are of the most evil tendency; the characters
they depict are of the most horrible description; but in the midst of
these disgraceful passages, there are beauties of such exquisite, such
redeeming qualities, that we adore while we pity--we admire while we
execrate--and are tempted to exclaim with the last of the Romans, "Oh!
what a fall is _here_, my countrymen." In the modern Eclogue of Rosalind
and Helen in particular, there is a pensive sadness, a delicious
melancholy, nurst in the purest, the deepest recesses of the heart, and
springing up like a fountain in the desert, that pervades the poem, and
forms its principal attraction. The rich yet delicate imagery that is
every where scattered over it, is like the glowing splendor of the
setting su