ing beings, is the "secret persuasion
which has given birth to the opinions of a future state."

If we turn to Shelley's published letters we shall find abundant
expressions of hostility to and contempt for religion. Those letters may
deserve the praise of Matthew Arnold or the censure of Mr. Swinburne;
but, in either case, they may be taken as honest documents, written
to all sorts of private friends, and never intended for publication.
Byron's letters were passed about freely, and largely written for
effect; Shelley's were written under ordinary conditions, and he
unbosomed himself with freedom and sincerity.

From one of his early letters we find that he contemplated a translation
of the _System of Nature_, which is frequently quoted in the notes
to _Queen Mob_. He couples Jehovah and Mammon together as fit for the
worship of "those who delight in wickedness and slavery." In a letter
to Henry Reveley he pictures God as delighted with his creation of the
earth, and seeing it spin round the sun; and imagines him taking out
"patents to supply all the suns in space with the same manufacture."
When the poet was informed by Oilier that a certain gentleman (it was
Archdeacon Hare) hoped he would humble his soul and "receive the spirit
into him," Shelley replied: "if you know him personally, pray ask him
from me what he means by receiving the _spirit into me_; and (if really
it is any good) how one is to get at it." He goes on to say: "I was
immeasurably amused by the quotation from Schlegel about the way in
which the popular faith is destroyed--first the Devil, then the Holy
Ghost, then God the Father. I had written a Lucianic essay to prove the
same thing." In the very year of his death, writing to John Gisborne, he
girds at the popular faith in God, and with reference to one of its most
abhorrent doctrines he exclaims--"As if, after sixty years' suffering
here, we were to be roasted alive for sixty million more in hell, or
charitably annihilated by a _coup de grace_ of the bungler who brought
us into existence at first."--A dozen other quotations from Shelley's
letters might be given, all to pretty much the same effect, but the
foregoing must suffice.

A thorough analysis of Shelley's poetry, showing the essential Atheism
which runs through it from beginning to end, would require more space
than we have at our command. We shall therefore simply point out, by
means of instances, how indignantly or contemptuously he alway