It needs no lively imagination to conceive the terror that agitated this anxious mother, to realize the apprehensions that, fretting her spirits incessantly, gave her sleepless nights and sorrowful days. Instead of being touched and subdued by the words and looks, that made him cognizant of her maternal solicitude, the young gentleman (who might have been the Saviour of the World) wrote lightly to his fellow-collegian on January 11, 1811, about his mother's alarm. She imagined him on the high road to perdition. She fancied him set on making infidels of his little sisters. Could anything be more laughable? It was, however, no laughable matter to the poor lady; and it should not have been a matter for laughter with her son. Why was his mother a simpleton for allowing such fears to trouble her, when the young gentleman was craftily and insidiously sapping his eldest sister's belief in Christianity, apportioning the new doctrine of Free Thought with nice consideration for her girlish timidity, and for the weakness of her intellect,--giving it in doses large enough to awaken and stimulate curiosity, without stirring her to amazement and horror? As he was working in this condescending and considerate manner on Elizabeth's darkness and weakness on the 26th of December, 1810, why was his mother a mere goose for fearing he might be no less condescending, and considerate, and slily beneficent to Elizabeth's younger sisters? Moreover the time was near at hand when, in his fanatical intolerance of all opinion from which he differed, the youthful philosopher regarded Elizabeth's younger sisters as quite old enough to digest the crumbs of truth, that fell from his lips. With all her disposition to minimize and palliate the feelings of her poet, Lady Shelley admits that such a youngster as the Oxonian Shelley would be a perplexing member of any household with a brood of children to be thought for. Indeed, she even goes the length of saying that, before accusing Mr. Timothy Shelley of treating his heir with inadequate tenderness, people should ask themselves how they would like to have in their houses a Spinozist or a Calvinist, so set on making converts, as to seek them in the butler's pantry or the children's schoolroom. Lady Shelley is even more particular, in moving every Christian mother to think, how she would like to entertain for her guest a Spinozist, desirous of making her 'youngest daughter' concur in his opinions. Readers should bear in mind how clearly the author of _Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources_, intimates that, instead of being the absurd and laughable fancy her son declared it, poor Mrs. Timothy Shelley's fear for the spiritual safety of her younger girls was nothing less than a reasonable anticipation of what actually took place in their schoolroom, in respect to the youngest of them, before the poet turned his back on Field Place for ever.