The following are the views of that eccentric, though in many respects sensible writer, Shelley, as presented in a note to his work, called Queen Mab. I have somewhat abridged them, not solely to escape part of his monstrous religious sentiments, but for other reasons. I have endeavored, however, to preserve, undisturbed, his opinions and reasonings, which I hope will make a deep and abiding impression: "The depravity of the physical and moral nature of man, originated in his unnatural habits of life. The language spoken by the mythology of nearly all religions seems to prove that, at some distant period, man forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of his being to unnatural appetites. Milton makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the consequence of his disobedience: '----Immediately, a place Before his eyes appeared; and, noisome, dark, A lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid Numbers of all diseased; all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.' "The fable of Prometheus, too, is explained in a manner somewhat similar. Before the time of Prometheus, according to Hesiod, mankind were exempt from suffering; they enjoyed a vigorous youth; and death, when at length it came, approached like sleep, and gently closed the eyes. Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of healthful innocence. "Man, and the animals which he has infected with his society, or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased. The wild hog, the bison, and the wolf are perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably die, either from external violence or natural old age. But the domestic hog, the sheep, the cow, and the dog are subject to an incredible number of distempers, and, like the corrupters of their nature, have physicians, who thrive upon their miseries. "The supereminence of man is like Satan's supereminence of pain,--and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event, that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that have been taken are irrevocable.