his return; but which still remains, and is one of the most curious and characteristic specimens of his prose style. It was a refreshing intellectual tour; one of the most pleasant rambles of his life. On his return he was met by painful intelligence. His wife had destroyed herself. Of her state of mind we have again no evidence. She is said to have been deeply affected by the ‘reports’ to which we have alluded; but whatever it was, Shelley felt himself greatly to blame. He had been instrumental in first dividing her from her family; had connected himself with her in a wild contract, from which neither could ever be set free; if he had not crossed her path, she might have been happy in her own way and in her own sphere. All this preyed upon his mind, and it is said he became mad; and whether or not his horror and pain went the length of actual frenzy, they doubtless approached that border-line of suffering excitement which divides the most melancholy form of sanity from the most melancholy form of insanity. In several poems he seems to delineate himself in the guise of a maniac: ‘“Of his sad history I know but this,” said Maddalo; “he came To Venice a dejected man, and fame Said he was wealthy, or he had been so. Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe; But he was ever talking in such sort As you do,—but more sadly: he seem’d hurt, Even as a man with his peculiar wrong, To hear but of the oppression of the strong, Or those absurd deceits (I think with you In some respects, you know) which carry through The excellent impostors of this earth When they outface detection. He had worth, Poor fellow! but a humourist in his way.”— —“Alas, what drove him mad?” “I cannot say: A lady came with him from France; and when She left him and returned, he wander’d then About yon lonely isles of desert sand Till he grew wild. He had no cash nor land Remaining:—the police had brought him here— Some fancy took him, and he would not bear Removal; so I fitted up for him Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim; And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers, Which had adorned his life in happier hours, And instruments of music. You may guess, A stranger could do little more or less For one so gentle and unfortunate— And those are his sweet strains, which charm the weight From madmen’s chains, and make this hell appear A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.” “Nay, this was kind of you,—he had no claim, As the world says.”