It is thus that Shelley, the scion of a middle-class family, the great-grandson of a Yankee apothecary, boasted of his ‘lineage high,’ to the admiration of eulogists, who speak disdainfully of Byron’s pride in his Norman descent. Of her conjugal union to Lionel--a union effected in accordance with the ways and principles of Free Lovers--Helen says, in terms descriptive of Mary’s bondless marriage with her father’s familiar friend,-- ‘And so we loved, and did unite All that in us was yet divided: For when he said, that many a rite, By men to bind but once provided, Could not be shared by him and me, Or they would kill him in their glee, I shuddered, and then laughing said-- “We will have rites our faith to bind, But our church shall be the starry night, Our altar the grassy earth outspread, And our priest the muttering wind.”’ A very delightful way of being married, no doubt; but in real life, marriages done thus lightly and elegantly, without church or chapel, priest or minister, officer or registrar, sometimes have inconvenient consequences. Another thing to render _Rosalind and Helen_ interesting to students of Shelley’s story, is its evidence that Shelley wrote the poem with a hope, that it would tend to draw Mary and Claire still closer together, and weld their hearts into an indissoluble union by the strongest mutual affection. That it was Mary who induced Shelley, at the baths of Lucca in the summer of 1818, to finish the poem which had this obvious purpose, is a part of the evidence that she was then animated by affection for the sister-by-affinity, whom she had so recently styled her ‘sister’ in a published book. Yet we are assured by Mr. Kegan Paul that, in 1818, Mrs. Shelley ‘felt as strongly as Byron that Allegra’s mother was the worst person possible to train the child.’ Had I not on certain occasions caught Mr. Kegan Paul, passing from clear evidences to strangely erroneous conclusions, I should take it for granted that he had sufficient documentary evidence for so strong and startling a statement. But I am slow to believe that Mrs. Shelley thought so ill of Claire, either at Marlow (where she styled Claire her ‘sister’ in a published book), or in any term of 1818, prior to the time when she encouraged Shelley to resume work on _Rosalind and Helen_. Under the circumstances, I can conceive that Mr. Kegan Paul has inferred too much from some words, penned by Mrs. Shelley, in order to induce Byron to take personal charge of Allegra. In 1817 and 1818, the Shelleys put strong pressure on Byron, to rear Allegra under his own roof and eye, and in doing so declared the strongest opinion that he was the fittest person to have charge of the child. But to argue from any expressions of this opinion, that Mrs. Shelley regarded her ‘sister’ as a person from whose deleterious influence the child should be preserved, would be alike unjust to the Shelleys and to Claire; it being