Nor will the Shelleyan apologists touch the main question by repeating one of their favourite pleas in Shelley’s behalf, viz., that, if he was wrong in stealthily carrying off his friend’s child, he believed himself quite right in doing so. It is curious that the lady, who in her girlhood was thus dealt with by her future husband, should have been the originator of the extraordinary plea. In her note to _Alastor_, Mrs. Shelley remarks of her husband, that ‘in all he did, he, at the time of doing it, believed himself justified to his own conscience.’ What makes this curious plea especially deserving of notice is its truth. As soon as Shelley wished to do a thing, it was manifest to him that he had a right to do it; and having done the thing (however wrong it might be), he could commend himself for virtue in having done it. Peacock tells a curious story, that may be repeated in illustration of Shelley’s readiness to discover a good motive, to justify anything he had a humour to do. One fine day in the early summer (probably of 1815), the two friends were walking through a village where there was a good vicarage-house, whose front wall was covered with corchorus in full bloom. In his delight at the pleasant house and garden, and the picturesque church near at hand, Shelley remarked seriously, ‘I feel strongly inclined to enter the church.’ ‘What,’ said Peacock, ‘to become a clergyman, with your ideas of the faith?’ Instead of admitting that a man of his views would be a miserable impostor to take orders for the sake of a good benefice, Shelley answered, ‘Assent to the supernatural part of it is merely technical. Of the moral doctrines of Christianity I am a more decided example than many of its more ostentatious professors. And consider for a moment how much good a good clergyman can do.... It is an admirable institution that admits the possibility of diffusing such men over the surface of the land. And am I to deprive myself of the advantages of this admirable institution, because there are certain technicalities to which I cannot give my adhesion, but I need not bring prominently forward?’