It was in Hogg's memory, when he wrote the _New Monthly_ sketches, how, after retreating from this tranquil spot as suddenly as he had entered it, Shelley spoke of the sacredness of the spot, that of course owed its attractiveness to the ministrations of feminine goodness and beauty; and how, after making it the haunt of a single enchantress, he changed the picture so far as to give her a sister, fair and sensitive as herself, for the sharer of her gentle toil and pure enjoyment of the garden in brighter seasons. In another of these walks, the inseparable undergraduates came, in a desolate part of the country, on a little girl, so young and small that she might almost be called a nursling, who had been placed there in her weariness to await the return of her mother and some other women. Having waited till she imagined herself deserted, the cold, hungry, miserable child was weeping and wailing piteously, when Shelley accosted her (ugly little brat though she was), won something of her confidence, and induced her to accompany him to the nearest dwelling, where he restored her to comparative contentment with a bowl of warm bread and milk. 'It was,' says Hogg, 'a strange spectacle to watch the young poet, whilst ... holding the wooden bowl in one hand, and the wooden spoon in the other, and kneeling on his left knee, that he might more certainly attain to her mouth, he urged and encouraged the torpid and timid child to eat. The hot milk was agreeable to the girl, and its effects were salutary; but she was obviously uneasy at the detention. Her uneasiness increased, and ultimately prevailed; we returned with her to the place where we had found her, Shelley bearing the bowl of milk in his hand, even to the spot where the child was already being sought for by her mother and friends.' To discredit this story, and press it into evidence that Hogg was an egregious liar, your true Shelleyan enthusiast does not hesitate in crying triumphantly, 'Is it possible for any man, after a lapse of two-and-twenty years, to remember whether his friend on a particular occasion knelt on his right knee or his left knee?' Yet I conceive no judicial reader will deny that the story bears the brand of substantial truthfulness; that the incident was just the incident to live in the spectator's memory; that the story accords with what has come to us from other sources of information respecting Shelley's womanly concern for children,--the feminine tenderness with which he nursed little Allegra in her infancy, and his own babes in their times of sickness.