fire
and food; how Africa will be explored by balloons, of which the shadows,
passing over the jungles, will emancipate the slaves. In the midst he
would rush out to a lecture on mineralogy, and come back sighing that it
was all about "stones, stones, stones"! The friends read Plato together,
and held endless talk of metaphysics, pre-existence, and the sceptical
philosophy, on winter walks across country, and all night beside the
fire, until Shelley would curl up on the hearthrug and go to sleep.
He was happy because he was left to himself. With all his thoughts and
impulses, ill-controlled indeed, but directed to the acquisition of
knowledge for the benefit of the world, such a student would nowadays be
a marked man, applauded and restrained. But the Oxford of that day was
a home of "chartered laziness." An academic circle absorbed in intrigues
for preferment, and enlivened only by drunkenness and immorality, could
offer nothing but what was repugnant to Shelley. He remained a solitary
until the hand of authority fell and expelled him.

He had always had a habit of writing to strangers on the subjects next
his heart. Once he approached Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne (afterwards
Mrs. Hemans), who had not been encouraging. Now half in earnest, and
half with an impish desire for dialectical scores, he printed a pamphlet
on 'The Necessity of Atheism', a single foolscap sheet concisely proving
that no reason for the existence of God can be valid, and sent it to
various personages, including bishops, asking for a refutation. It fell
into the hands of the college authorities. Summoned before the council
to say whether he was the author, Shelley very properly refused to
answer, and was peremptorily expelled, together with Hogg, who had
intervened in his behalf.

The pair went to London, and took lodgings in a house where a wall-paper
with a vine-trellis pattern caught Shelley's fancy. Mr. Timothy Shelley
appeared on the scene, and, his feelings as a Christian and a father
deeply outraged, did the worst thing he could possibly have done--he
made forgiveness conditional on his son's giving up his friend. The next
step was to cut off supplies and to forbid Field Place to him, lest he
should corrupt his sisters' minds. Soon Hogg had to go to York to
work in a conveyancer's office, and Shelley was left alone in London,
depressed, a martyr, and determined to save others from similar
persecution. In this mood he formed a connection de