conclusions, by giving an undue prominence in the estimate of all such philosophizing as could most easily, by its nature, refrain from passionate or poetic expression? Thus, would philosophy, or one kind of philosophy in comparison with another, have seemed to had been in such a diminished condition in Britain about the year 1830, if critics had been in the habit of counting Wordsworth in the philosophic list as well as Coleridge, Mackintosh, Bentham, and James Mill? Was there not more of what you might call Spinozaism in Wordsworth than even in Coleridge, who spoke more of Spinoza? But that hardly needs all this justification, so far as Mr. Tennyson is concerned, of our reckoning _him_ in the present list. He that would exclude In "Memoriam" (1850) and "Maud" (1855) from the conspectus of the philosophical literature of our time, has yet to learn what philosophy is. Whatever else "In Memoriam" may be, it is a manual for many of the latest hints and questions in British Metaphysics." The soi-disant philosophers and classifiers of the sciences and arts who will not permit such poets as Shelley and Tennyson to be put in the category of philosophers, remind one very forcibly of the passage in Macbeth: "The earth has bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them!" As a poet and not as a poet, as an acknowledged legislator for the race, as a philosopher, (a searcher after, or lover of wisdom) and as a political and social reformer, it is my intention to treat Shelley this evening, and having finished my prefatory remarks, will now regard him in those attributes which peculiarly should enshrine him in your hearts and mine. The philosophical theories of advanced thinkers are always tinged with the reflex of that which called them forth, or impeded them in their development, consequently social bondage and the "anarch custom" being always present to Shelley, the great idea ever uppermost to him was that true happiness is only attainable in perfect freedom: the atrocious system of fagging, now almost extinct in the English Public Schools and the tyrannical venality of ushers, deeply impressed themselves on the mind of Shelley, and he tells us, in the beautiful lines to his wife, of the remembrance of his endeavors to overthrow these abominations having failed, of flying from "the harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes" and of the high and noble resolves which inspired him: "And then I clasp'd my hands, and look'd around; But none were near to mock my streaming eyes, Which pour'd their warm drops on the sunny ground. So, without shame, I spake: 'I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power; for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannize Without reproach or check.' I then controll'd My tears; my heart grew calm; and I was meek and bold.