ack and nothing
beyond but the country. Close to the house there was a small
pleasure-ground, with a mound at the farther end of the lawn slightly
inclosing the view. Behind the mound there was a kitchen-garden, not
unintermixed with flowers and ornamental vegetation; and farther still
was a piece of ground traversed by a lane deeply excavated in the
chalk soil. At that time Shelley had a thousand a year allowed to
him by his father; but although he was in no respect the unreckoning,
wasteful person that many have represented him to be, such a sum must
have been insufficient for the mode in which he lived. His family
comprised himself, Mary, William their eldest son, and Claire
Claremont,--the daughter of Godwin's second wife, and therefore
the half-sister of Mary Shelley,--a girl of great ability, strong
feelings, lively temper, and, though not regularly handsome, of
brilliant appearance. They kept three servants, if not a fourth
assistant: a cook; Elise, a Swiss _gouvernante_ for the child; and
Harry, a man who did the work of gardener and man-servant in general.
He kept something like open house; for while I was there with my
father and mother, there also came, for a short time, several other
friends, some of whom stopped for more than a passing visit. He played
the Lord Bountiful among his humbler neighbors, not only helping them
with money or money's-worth, but also advising them in sickness; for
he had made some study of medicine, in part, I suspect, to be the more
useful.

I have already intimated that he had assisted certain of his
companions; and I am convinced that these circumstances contributed to
the resolution which Shelley formed to leave England for Italy in
the year 1818, although he then ascribed his doing so to the score of
health,--or rather, as he said, of life. He then believed himself
to be laboring under a tendency to consumption, not without medical
warnings to that effect, although there were strong reasons for
doubting the validity of the belief, which was based upon less precise
grounds before the introduction of auscultation and the careful
examinations of our day. It was, however, characteristic of Shelley
to rest his actions upon the dominant motive; so that, if several
inducements operated to the same end, he absolutely discarded the
minor considerations, and acted solely upon the grand one. I can well
remember, that, when other persons urged upon him cumulative reasons
for any course o