pe was stirred to the utter
depths by that great French Revolution which marked a new epoch in the
world's history. The revolutionary wave surged across the western world,
and passed over England as well as other countries. Some thought
the huge eclipse of social order which accompanied it the herald of
approaching night, and others thought it the dawn of a new day; but none
were indifferent. There was an intense excitement of radical passions
and desires, a quickening of all the springs of life. This produced a
blossoming of our literature such as had not been witnessed since the
great Elizabethan age, and then, as before, Free-thought mixed with
the vital sap. Of the long array of post-revolutionary names I select
three--Thomas Paine, who represented the keen and restless common-sense
of Freethought; William Godwin, who represented its calmer philosophy;
and Shelley, who represented its lofty hopes and soaring aspirations.
Godwin has almost faded into a name; Paine's great work is nearly done,
for a deeper and more scientific scepticism has possessed itself of the
field in which he labored; but Shelley has a message for generations
yet unborn. He emerges as the supreme figure destined to immortality
of fame. All great and noble and beautiful qualities cohere in him, the
"poet of poets and purest of men." And he is ours. Byron, with all his
splendid energy and terrible scorn, quailed before the supreme problems
of life; but Shelley faced them with a courage all the greater because
it was unconscious, and casting aside all superstitious dreams and
illusory hopes, yearned prophetically towards the Future, when freedom,
truth and love shall supersede all other trinities, and realise here on
earth that Paradise which theologians have only promised in a world to
come.

A Shelley cultus has grown up during recent years, and many of our most
gifted writers reverently bow themselves before him. I have only to
mention such names as Browning, Swinburne, and Rossetti to show the
intellectual rank of his worshippers. Their number increases every year,
and it is touching to witness the avidity with which they seize on all
new facts relating to him, whether the record of some episode in his
life, a reported conversation, or a scrap of writing from his hand.

From the Shelley and Byron period to the fresh revolutionary outburst
of 1848 there was a lull in England as well as elsewhere. Several great
political reforms were achieved in