athered round us.
Nearly all are dead, and, when Memory recurs to the past, she wanders
among tombs. The genius, with all his blighting errors and mighty
powers; the companion of Shelley's ocean-wanderings, and the sharer of
his fate, than whom no man ever existed more gentle, generous, and
fearless; and others, who found in Shelley's society, and in his great
knowledge and warm sympathy, delight, instruction, and solace; have
joined him beyond the grave. A few survive who have felt life a desert
since he left it. What misfortune can equal death? Change can convert
every other into a blessing, or heal its sting--death alone has no cure.
It shakes the foundations of the earth on which we tread; it destroys
its beauty; it casts down our shelter; it exposes us bare to desolation.
When those we love have passed into eternity, 'life is the desert and
the solitude' in which we are forced to linger--but never find comfort
more.

There is much in the "Adonais" which seems now more applicable to
Shelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned. The
poetic view he takes of death, and the lofty scorn he displays towards
his calumniators, are as a prophecy on his own destiny when received
among immortal names, and the poisonous breath of critics has vanished
into emptiness before the fame he inherits.

Shelley's favourite taste was boating; when living near the Thames or by
the Lake of Geneva, much of his life was spent on the water. On the
shore of every lake or stream or sea near which he dwelt, he had a boat
moored. He had latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no
pleasure-boats on the Arno; and the shallowness of its waters (except in
winter-time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for boating)
rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. Shelley,
however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived
a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to
cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests,--a boat
of laths and pitched canvas. It held three persons; and he was often
seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, who remonstrated
on the danger, and could not understand how anyone could take pleasure
in an exercise that risked life. 'Ma va per la vita!' they exclaimed. I
little thought how true their words would prove. He once ventured, with
a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm day, down the Arno and round the