affection and
friendship; and lastly, the cultivation of "the ideal," especially as
it is developed in imaginative literature. His life was passed in an
absolute devotion to these three principles. A one-sided frankness has
blazoned to the world the sacrifices which he accepted from friends,
but has whispered nothing of the more than commensurate sacrifices
made on his side; and the simplicity that rendered him the creature of
the library in which he lived entered into the expression of all his
thoughts and feelings.

[Footnote A: Leigh Hunt.]

Although I can remember some of the most eminent men who visited us
in prison, Shelley I cannot; but I can well recall my father's
description of the young stranger who came to him breathing the
classic thoughts of college, ardent with aspirations for the
emancipation of man from intellectual slavery, and endowed by Nature
with an aspect truly "angelic."

In the interval before his next visit to us, Shelley had passed
through the first serious passion of his youth, had married Harriet
Westbrooke, had become the father of two children, and had thus to all
appearance secured the transmission of the estates strictly entailed
with the baronetcy,--but had also been exiled from his family-home,
as well as from college, for his revolutionary and infidel principles,
had gone through a course of domestic disappointment, had separated
from his wife, and was threatened with the removal of his children,
on the ground of the impious and "immoral" training to which they were
destined under his guardianship. He came to our house for support and
consolation; he found in it a home for his intellect as well as for
his feelings, and he was as strictly a part of the family as any of
our blood-relations, for he came and went at pleasure. I can remember
that I performed his bidding equally with that of my father; and as to
personal deference or regard, the only distinction which my memory
can discover is, that I found in Shelley a companion whom I better
understood, and whose country rambles I was more pleased to share. For
this there were many reasons, and amongst them that Shelley entered
more unreservedly into the sports and even the thoughts of children.
I had probably awakened interest in him, not only because I was my
father's eldest child, but still more because I had already begun to
read with great avidity, and with an especial sense of imaginative
wonders and horrors; and, familiarized