But though he did nothing unusual or otherwise remarkable in talking of his love and his Harriett's loveliness to his one familiar male friend, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley did what few young Englishmen of gentle lineage and culture would have done,--what no young gentleman could do, without lacking in some degree the delicate fastidiousness and proud reserve befitting a youth of breeding and quality,--when, out of fraternal concern for the young lady's welfare, and in the fervour of his generous affection for so incomparable a friend, he invited Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg to visit Field Place on the first convenient opportunity, for the express purpose of seeing the eldest daughter of the house, falling in love with her, and marrying her. It is not often that a young lady (_ætat._ sixteen, living under the protection of her father and mother) is thus offered in marriage by her elder brother (_ætat._ eighteen) to a young gentleman whom she has never seen. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Bysshe Shelley that his father and mother were entitled to a voice on the disposal of their daughter in marriage, that before entering on negotiations on so delicate a subject, with a gentleman of whose person and family they were alike ignorant, he should consult the Fiery Hun on the business, and learn from the Fiery Hun's wife, whether the arrangement would be agreeable to her feelings. From what is known of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg's character and lively humour in his later time, one may imagine that in the lightness and levity of his earlier time he was vastly tickled by his young friend's flattering proposal for this alliance of their respective houses; that he saw the probable advantage of wedding the daughter of so wealthy a baronet, as Mr. Timothy Shelley would become on the death of his aged father; and that he was strongly predisposed to admire his young friend's sister, who was said to resemble her brother in the colour of her eyes and hair, no less than in the pink-and-white freshness of her complexion, and to surpass him greatly in facial comeliness, by virtue of the delicate symmetry of a countenance, whose most prominent feature was faultless in size and shape. Anyhow, the undergraduate from the northern county, who, on account of its remoteness, had no intention of returning to his father's roof at Christmas or Easter, consented readily to a project that, even if nothing more came of it, would enable him to pass the shorter vacations in congenial society at no inconvenient distance from the University.