ble would seem his lofty and ideal requirements. The
parting was not unfriendly, and Shelley always spoke of her with deep
kindness and pity, and she continued to write to him for some time after
he had formed his connection with Mary Godwin, of which she did not seem
to disapprove. He had found a sort of comfort in his intercourse with
Mary from his first acquaintance with her, and she was probably the
first woman he had ever known who in any way understood or appreciated
him. Some lines have been given in the "Relics," written to her at this
time, which run thus:--

"Upon my heart thy accents sweet
Of peace and pity fell like dew
On flowers half-dead. . . .

"We are not happy, sweet! our state
Is strange and full of doubt and fear;
More need of words that ills abate;--
Reserve or censure come not near
Our sacred friendship, lest there be
No solace left for thee or me."

Shelley and Mary seem to have been very happy with each other from the
first, although they felt the keenest sorrow at his being deprived by
the Court of Chancery of the guardianship of his children, on the
alleged grounds of his atheism, and although they were inexpressibly
pained and shocked at the suicide of Harriet, which occurred about two
years after the separation.

Her death seems to have had no immediate connection with any act of
Shelley's, but he mourned over it with great bitterness to the end of
his life. He married Mary in a legal manner soon after Harriet's death,
and of course a most violent storm of detraction and denunciation burst
upon his head. He soon retired to Italy, where he first met Byron, and
he passed nearly all the rest of his life there. Poor Harriet was only
twenty-two at the time of her tragic death. Whatever may have been the
errors of her life, she had suffered much in their expiation. After her
return to her father's house it appears that she was treated with
unkindness, and fell into some irregularities of life,--how great,
remains still a disputed point. But no one charges anything against her
up to the time of her separation from Shelley, except that she was
almost as foolish and impracticable as himself.

Shelley's fancy for her was that of a mere boy, and his friend Mr.
Peacock thus describes the conflict of his feelings after meeting Mary
Godwin:--

"Between his old feelings towards Harriet, from whom he was not
then separated, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his