Nothing disturbed his serenity, but the unfortunate holly.’ That Shelley never in later time went out of his mind from horror at Harriett’s fate is certain. There has been much vain and wholly needless conjecture, as to the considerations and the individuals that determined Shelley to marry Mary Godwin. It has been said that Byron advised him to make her his wife. It has been averred, Godwin constrained him to make Mary an honest woman. If Shelley spoke to him with any show of reluctance to celebrate the marriage, Godwin no doubt told him roundly that all intercourse was at an end between them for ever, should he delay to make Mary his wife. But there is no reason to suppose Godwin was tempted to speak thus plainly and threateningly. Nor is there good ground for thinking that Byron’s counsel determined Shelley’s course. How the matter came about is sufficiently obvious. Shelley’s disapproval of marriage as a vain and depraving institution, was attended with a clear perception of the several reasons why, in an evil state of society, a man should consent to prevailing superstition and prejudice, so far as to put a bridal ring with the usual ceremony on the finger of the woman, with whom he intended to live for a considerable period. By marrying Mary he would qualify any son hereafter born to him by her, to succeed to the Castle Goring baronetcy, in case poor Harriett’s son should die without male issue. By marrying Mary he would confer on her something of the social respectability he wished her to have, alike from considerations of pride and affection. By marrying Mary he would inflict another annoyance on his father. On the other hand, by refusing to marry Mary, or even shilly-shallying about the question, he would incense her father and, worse still, provoke her anger and disdain. Under these circumstances how could he hesitate to marry Mary, as he had previously married Harriett? As to the sacrifice of personal liberty involved in the act of marriage, experience had taught him that to a man of his views the _vinculum matrimonii_ was no galling restraint on individual freedom.