“As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour of his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life most conspicuous.... I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best specimens of gentleness; but (may my candour and preference be pardoned), I can affirm that Shelley was almost the only example I have yet found that was never wanting, even in the most minute particular, of the infinite and various observances of pure, entire, and perfect gentility.” This is the voluntary testimony of a friend who was not inclined to excess of praise.[235] The sudden end of his career at Oxford had estranged him from his father, who was of a temperament the very opposite to that of the enthusiastic reformer--harsh, intolerant, and bigoted in his prejudices; and the young Shelley’s marriage, shortly afterwards, to Harriet Westbrook, a young girl of much beauty, but of little cultivation of mind, and in a position of life different from his own, incensed him still further. The marriage, happy enough in the beginning, proved to be an ill-assorted one, and various causes contributed to the inevitable _dénouement_. After a union of some three years, the marriage, by mutual consent, was dissolved. Two years later--not, it seems, in consequence of the divorce, as sometimes has been suggested--the young wife put an end to her existence--a terrible and tragic termination of an ill-considered attachment, which must have caused him the deepest pangs of grief, and which seems always, and justly, to have cast a gloomy shadow upon his future life. Brief as his career was, we can refer only to the most interesting events in it. Of these, his enthusiastic effort to arouse a bloodless revolution in Ireland, such as, if effected, might have prevented the continued miseries of that especially neglected portion of the three kingdoms, is not the least noteworthy. With his lately-married wife and her sister he was living at Keswick, when, by a sudden inspiration, he resolved to cross the Channel, and engage in the work of propagating his principles of political and social reform. This was in the early part of 1812. In Dublin, where they established their head-quarters, he printed an _Address to the Irish People_, which, by his own hands, as well as by other agency, was distributed far and wide. In this wonderfully well-considered and reasonable manifesto, the principles laid down as necessary to success in attempting deliverance from ages of bad laws and misgovernment, are as sound as the ardour and sincerity of his hopeless undertaking are unmistakeable. The cosmopolitan scope of the _Address_ appears in such passages as these:--