Think of Shelley's life in its main outlines. The son of a good family, he was sent to an aristocratic school, where, while yet a child, he was roused to wrath and opposition by the brutality of the boys and the cruelty of the masters. What especially kindled his indignation as he grew older was the hypocrisy with which those who gave free rein to their bad passions perpetually talked of God and Christianity. During his second year at Oxford, Shelley wrote an essay _On the Necessity of Atheism_, of which, with naïve straightforwardness, he sent copies to the Church and University authorities. He was summoned before them, and, on refusing to retract what he had written, was expelled for atheism. He went home, but his father received him with such contemptuous coldness that he soon left again, never to return. His whole life was a tissue of similar rebellions and similar misfortunes. In his twentieth year he was threatened with consumption, and though he recovered, he was thenceforward a delicate, nervously irritable man. The Court of Chancery refused him the guardianship of his own children (after the death of his first wife) on the ground that he had propagated immoral and irreligious doctrines in _Queen Mab_. After this he left England for ever, and lived in Italy in voluntary exile until sudden death put an end to his sad and homeless existence. His boat was capsized in a squall in the Gulf of Spezzia, and he was drowned, at the age of twenty-nine. In contrast with such a life as this, Hardenberg's is a true German country-town idyll. At the age of twenty-five he received a Government appointment, an auditorship at one of the state saltworks, and a year or two later he was advanced to be "assessor" at the saltworks of Weissenfels. His Romanticism in no way interfered with his fulfilment of his duties as a good citizen. In his capacity of Government official he was zealous, conscientious, and steady--one of the men who do their duty and are guilty of no extravagances, and whose position is consequently assured. His republicanism was short-lived, and he is only saved by his naïveté from the charge of servility. He calls Frederick William and Louisa of Prussia "ein klassisches Menschenpaar;" in the revelation of these "geniuses" he sees an omen of a better world. Frederick William is, he says, the first king of Prussia; he crowns himself every day. A real "transubstantiation" has taken place; for the court has been transformed into a family, the throne into a sanctuary, a royal marriage into an eternal union of hearts. Only youthful prejudice, he maintains, inclines to a republic; the married man desires order, safety, quietness, a well-regulated household, a "real monarchy." "A constitution has for us only the interest of a dead letter. How different is the law which is the expression of the will of a beloved and revered person! We have no right to conceive of the monarch as the first officer of the state; he is not a citizen, and