ch mankind
might attain, when once it should "arise and will." The first of the
three pictures is the most literally Godwinian. It is the boyish sketch
of _Queen Mab_, with pantisocracy faithfully touched in, and Godwin's
speculations on the improvement of the human frame suggested in a few
pregnant lines. One does not feel that Shelley's mind is even yet its
own master in the firmer and maturer picture which concludes the third
act of _Prometheus Unbound_. He is still repeating a lesson, and it
calls forth less than the full powers of his imagination. The picture of
perfection itself is cold, negative, and mediocre. The real genius of
the poet breaks forth only when he allows himself in the fourth act to
sing the rapture of the happy spirits who "bear Time to his tomb in
eternity," while they circle in lyrical joy around the liberated earth.
There sings Shelley. The picture itself is a faithful illustration
etched with a skilful needle to adorn the last chapter of _Political
Justice_. Evil is once more and always something factitious and
unessential. The Spirit of the Earth sees the "ugly human shapes and
visages" which men had worn in the old bad days float away through the
air like chaff on the wind. They were no more than masks. Thrones are
kingless, and forthwith men walk in upright equality, neither fawning
nor trembling. Republican sincerity informs their speech:

None talked that common false cold hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes.

Women are "changed to all they dared not be," and "speak the wisdom once
they could not think." "Thrones, altars, judgment-seats and prisons,"
and all the "tomes of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance" cumber the
ground like the unnoticed ruins of a barbaric past.

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless and nationless
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man
Passionless.

The story ends there, and if we do not so much as wait for the assurance
that man passionless, tribeless, and nationless lived happily ever
afterwards, it is because we are unable to feel even this faint interest
in his destiny. There is something amiss with an ideal which is
constrained to express itself in negatives. What should be the climax of
a triumphant argument becomes its refutation. To reduce ourselves to
this abstract quintessential