urely
formed belief, that the ability to _receive_ influence is the most
exalted faculty to which human nature can attain, while the exercise
of an arbitrary power centring in self is not only debasing, but is an
actual destroyer of human faculty.

There can be no doubt that he had profited greatly in his moral
condition, as well as in his bodily health, by the greater
tranquillity which he enjoyed in the society of Mary, and also by the
sympathy which gave full play to his ideas, instead of diverting and
disappointing them. She was, indeed, herself a woman of extraordinary
power, of heart as well as head. Many circumstances conspired to
conceal some of her natural faculties. She lost her mother very young;
her father--speaking with great diffidence, from a very slight and
imperfect knowledge--appeared to me a harsh and ungenial man. She
inherited from him her thin voice, but not the steel-edged sharpness
of his own; and she inherited, not from him, but from her mother, a
largeness of heart that entered proportionately into the working
of her mind. She had a masculine capacity for study; for, though I
suspect her early schooling was irregular, she remained a student all
her life, and by painstaking industry made herself acquainted with
any subject that she had to handle. Her command of history and
her imaginative power are shown in such books as "Valperga" and
"Castruccio"; but the daring originality of her mind comes out most
distinctly in her earliest published work, "Frankenstein." Its leading
idea has been ascribed to her husband, but, I am sure, unduly; and the
vividness with which she has brought out the monstrous tale in all its
horror, but without coarse or revolting incidents, is a proof of the
genius which she inherited alike from both her parents. It is clear,
also, that the society of Shelley was to her a great school, which she
did not appreciate to the full until most calamitously it was taken
away; and yet, of course, she could not fail to learn the greater part
of what it had become to her. This again showed itself even in her
appearance, after she had spent some years in Italy; for, while she
had grown far more comely than she was in her mere youth, she had
acquired a deeper insight into many subjects that interested Shelley,
and some others; and she had learned to express the force of natural
affection, which she was born to feel, but which had somehow been
stunted and suppressed in her youth. In the