carriage.

2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and
studying.

3d. Harriet's walks with Hogg "commonly conducted us to some fashionable
bonnet-shop."

4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse.

5th. When an operation was being performed upon the baby, "Harriet stood
by, narrowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of the
operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion."

6th. Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still of the household.

The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all in; there is no more. Upon
these six counts she stands indicted of the crime of driving her husband
into that sty at Bracknell; and this crime, by these helps, the
biographical prosecuting attorney has set himself the task of proving
upon her.

Does the biographer call himself the attorney for the prosecution?
No, only to himself, privately; publicly he is the passionless,
disinterested, impartial judge on the bench. He holds up his judicial
scales before the world, that all may see; and it all tries to look so
fair that a blind person would sometimes fail to see him slip the false
weights in.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, first, because Harriet had persuaded him to set up a carriage.
I cannot discover that any evidence is offered that she asked him to set
up a carriage. Still, if she did, was it a heavy offence? Was it
unique? Other young wives had committed it before, others have committed
it since. Shelley had dearly loved her in those London days; possibly he
set up the carriage gladly to please her; affectionate young husbands do
such things. When Shelley ran away with another girl, by-and-by, this
girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses
down the bottomless well of her father's debts, but this impartial judge
finds no fault with that. Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money--
necessarily by borrowing, there was no other way--to pay her father's
debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and
imprisoned for his own debts; yet the good judge finds no fault with her
even for this.

First and last, Shelley emptied into that rapacious mendicant's lap a sum
which cost him--for he borrowed it at ruinous rates--from eighty to one
hundred thousand dollars. But it was Mary Godwin's papa, the
supplications were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary's
strenuous friend, s