aggregate of independent atoms, free from all conventions, from all prescriptive rights and privileges, without the slightest respect for any traditional institutions, and acting at every moment in obedience to the pure dictates of reason. When these principles have forced their way, and the omnipotence of reason shows their triumph to be only a question of time, we shall reach the millennium. Mind will then be omnipotent over matter (though it is rather hard to say what either of those two entities may be); kings, priests, laws, and family associations will disappear; and every man will live in perfect peace and happiness in the light of reason. One difficulty, indeed, suggests itself. Why, if reason be thus omnipotent, has it done so little in the past? Whence this persistence of inequality and injustice, this enormous power of sheer obstinate, unreasoning prejudice in a set of beings who are to be so completely regenerated by the power of pure reason? Monarchy, he declares summarily, is founded on imposture. How, if reason be the one force, has imposture been so successful, and, if successful for so long, why should it not be successful hereafter? To this Godwin has no very intelligible answer, or perhaps he hardly sees that an answer is desirable. But, in truth, his whole system appears to be so grotesque when brought to one focus and distinctly stated, that we must in fairness recall two things: first, that most philosophical systems appear absurd when summarised after their extinction; and, secondly, that in bringing out in a very brief space the most salient features of such a doctrine, it is quite impossible to avoid caricature. There is enough not only of apparent philosophy in it, but of really intelligent—though strangely one-sided—reflection to enable us to understand how this deification of reason, falling in with the most advanced movements of the time, should affect Shelley's simple, impulsive, and marvellously imaginative nature. Men of much stricter logical training considered Godwin to be a great, if paradoxical, thinker, and Shelley, who had rather an affinity for abstract metaphysical ideas than a capacity for constructing them into logical wholes, was for a time entirely carried away. When after reading Godwin's quiet prosaic enunciation of the most startling paradoxes in the least impassioned language, we turn to Shelley's poetical interpretation, the two seem to be related as the stagnant pool to the rainbow-coloured mist into which it has been transmuted. Shelley's fervid enthusiasm has vapourised the slightly muddy philosophic prose, changed it into impalpable ether, and tinged it with the most brilliant, if evanescent, hue. Shelley had certainly learnt from others besides Godwin, and in particular had begun those Platonic readings which afterwards generated his characteristic belief in a transcendental world, the abode of the archetypal ideas of beauty, love, and wisdom. But through all his poetry we find a