In dealing with Shelley’s conduct to his familiar friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter, the Shelleyan Socialists will not touch the questions at issue, by urging that he was unhappy with his wife; by showing that he had good (_even the gravest_) reasons for dissatisfaction with her; or by arguing that good and wise men have distinguished themselves by benevolence to their species, and laboured with eminent advantage to their fellow-creatures, whilst associating conjugally with women who were not their wives. Every one knows that men of exemplary beneficence, whose services to their species are commemorated in the brightest pages of its history, have lived amiably and usefully in the closest domestic union with women to whom they were not lawfully wedded. The question is not whether or no, after discovering real cause for quarrel with his wife, and finding himself unable to live happily with her, he would, after a considerable lapse of time, have been justified in going to a woman (already in the maturity of intellect and of years) and saying to her, ‘I made, in my boyhood, a miserable marriage, from which I cannot get legal release. You know every particular of my story; nothing of it has been withheld from you. Your age and your experience qualify you to estimate the nature, and magnitude, and consequences of the sacrifice I ask of you. As far as any woman can be in such a position, you are in a position to justify you in ministering to my happiness, in contravention of human laws and social sentiment. My prayer is that you may love me as I love you, and will grant me all that my love requires of you. But in consideration of the enormity of the sacrifice you will make of your interests in yielding to my prayer, I cannot allow you to consent impulsively, but beg you to ponder my proposal with all possible calmness before you answer.’ The question is not raised whether or no Shelley, some ten or twenty years after his complete separation from Harriett, might have spoken in this way to a woman some thirty years of age.