However they may differ about the literary style and logical force of this tract, all fair readers must allow that it exhibits no signs of levity, no indication of having been thrown off in jest as a satire on the class of performances to which it really belongs. From the first line to the last, it accords with the Atheist's declaration (in the advertisement) that he is actuated by a love of truth, and is earnestly desirous that its arguments may receive serious consideration. Yet it has been described as a mere harmless piece of fun. The Shelleyan apologists call attention to the brevity of the monograph, as though it were a fact in Shelley's favour. It is suggested that serious books are long books of many pages with many words on a page; and that so short an essay (even if it was wrong of Shelley to produce it) should be regarded as a trivial performance, and its publication as nothing worse than a trivial indiscretion; the implication being that the Master and Fellows of University College were guilty of monstrous injustice and cruelty in expelling the author of so small a work. In thus prating about the insignificant size of the work, these apologists resemble the peccant maid-servant, who pleaded that, if she had given birth to an infant without having gone through any form of lawful marriage, it should be remembered, in palliation of the misdemeanour, that her baby was an unusually little one. Writing from those 'authentic sources,' which have afforded her much strange misinformation, Lady Shelley assures us that the little pamphlet was a 'publication consisting of only two pages;' whereas if she will only return to her original sources and count the duly numbered pages, the author of _Shelley Memorials_ will discover that the text of the small treatise occupies _seven pages_, besides the title-page and the page exhibiting the 'advertisement,' which is no immaterial part of the composition. How came Lady Shelley to count the pages so carelessly? Lady Shelley is curiously wrong on other points about this little pamphlet. 'In point of fact,' we are told by the lady who suffered so acutely from Hogg's inaccuracies, 'the pamphlet did not contain any positive assertion.' Why, the tract is made of positive assertions; it would not be easy for Lady Shelley to find another tract of the same length, containing a greater number of positive assertions. The tract concludes with a sentence of these words:--'Every reflecting mind must allow that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity;' words followed by what the lady calls 'a Q. E. D.' What more does this assertion require to render it 'positive?' Speaking from her original sources, Lady Shelley tells us that Shelley wrote the little pamphlet 'hastily,' and 'with his habitual disregard of consequences.' How a pamphlet, made up out of the 'very careful analysis' of Hume's _Essays_, which Shelley and his friend had prepared in the previous term, can be said to have been written