abandonment into ‘an amicable agreement effected in virtue of a mutual understanding.’ The impression prevails that there exists some piece of legal draughting, some ‘regular agreement’ (as the phrase goes, duly signed and sealed, in evidence of this agreement), and that Lady Shelley and Mr. Garnett have, in some way, pledged themselves to produce this document for the satisfaction of the world. I cannot take this view of the case. Whilst Lady Shelley has not (to my knowledge) published separately and in her own name a single line, to account for this impression, Mr. Garnett, in his studiously guarded words, appears to abstain with nice and nervous caution from stating that any such legal instrument either exists or ever was executed. All he promises is ‘the publication of documents hitherto withheld,’ which will prove that the separation resulted from ‘long-continued unhappiness,’ and was ‘an amicable agreement effected in virtue of a mutual understanding,’--statements of whose truth there is abundant evidence. That Harriett eventually consented to what she could not help is certain. Moreover, it may be fairly argued that Harriett’s successive acts of consent to the arrangement, thus forced upon her, partook of the nature of condonation of the abandonment, so far as to qualify the sheer cruel desertion into an incident of the series of mere disagreements. There may, for all I know, be amongst the Field Place MSS. a regular signed and sealed agreement of separation, with stipulations touching the moneys to be paid by Shelley and received by Harriett,--an agreement comprising all the usual common-form assertions of free-will and qualified goodwill on the part of each of the parties. But to produce any such agreement would not be to disprove, or otherwise affect, what has been said of the desertion, which was the first stage of the separation.