The strange people who gathered about Shelley in the two sets of rooms were, with two or three exceptions, of no finer quality than the fare with which he regaled them. For the most part, enthusiastic vegetarians, and fervid believers in the perfectibility of the human species, they exercised themselves in debating the best and quickest means of raising mankind to the perfection of which it was capable, and in disputing whether it was lawful for vegetarians to eat eggs and butter, to drink milk and put cream to their strawberries. In comparison with most of the men, who talked excitedly on these momentous questions, the Chevalier de Lawrence was a discreet and sober intellect. But the men were surpassed by the women of the coterie in piquant eccentricity and grotesque fancifulness. With her placid interest in self-murder, and her avowed purpose of putting an end to her own existence, should it become a few degrees less tolerable, Harriett may be presumed to have sympathized with the dejection of the equally languid and miserable gentlewoman, who would have perished under the burden of her imaginary woes, had it not been for the solace of Petrarch sonnets. Another gentlewoman of the circle was chiefly remarkable for holding that, to enjoy perfect health of mind and body, it was necessary for the British matron to begin every day by sitting for three or four hours in unqualified nudity,--hours which, of course, every fair practitioner of nakedness was expected to pass in the strictest privacy; it being further recommended that she should employ them in reading high literature or in writing letters. In society, after telling how she had passed the first three hours of the well-spent morning, she sometimes added, for the edification of listeners, ‘I feel so innocent during the rest of the day.’ Finding the regimen of matutinal nakedness so beneficial to herself, this exemplary gentlewoman trained her children to go without clothing about the house for the greater part of the day. One of the drollest pages of Hogg’s delightful book tells how, on hearing Shelley’s familiar rap at the front door, this lady’s brood of infants (a twelve-years old boy, a girl _ætat._ ten, a boy _ætat._ nine, and two wee girls, the younger of whom was only five years of age) rushed downstairs in perfect nudity, in order to greet so favourite a friend even on the door-mat.