torture until this money comes from London, though I am sure that it will and must come ; unless, indeed, my banker has broke, and then it will be my loss, not Henry's a little delay will mend the matter. I would then write instantly to London an effectual letter, and by return of post all would be set right it would then be a thing easily set straight-but if it were not, you know me too well not to know that there is no personal suffering or degradation, or toil, or anything that can be named, with which I do not feel myself bound to support this enterprise of Henry. But all this rhodomontade only shows how correct Mr. Bielby's advice was, about the discipline necessary for my imagination. No doubt that all will go on with mercantile and common-place exactness, and that you will be spared the suffering, and I the virtue, incident to some untoward event.

I am anxious to hear of Mr. Gisborne's return, and I anticipate the surprise and pleasure with which he will learn that a resolution has been taken which leaves you nothing to regret in that event. It is with unspeakable satisfaction that I reflect that my entreaties and persuasions overcame your scruples on this point, and that whatever advantage shall accrue from it will belong to you, whilst any reproach due to the imprudence of such an enterprise must rest on me. I shall thus share the pleasure of success, and bear the blame and loss, (if such a thing were possible,) of a reverse; and what more can a man, who is a friend to another, desire for himself? Let us believe in a kind of optimism, in which we are our own gods. It is best that Mr. Gisborne should have returned; it is best that I should have over-persuaded you and Henry; it is best that you should all live together, without any more solitary attempts; it is best that this one attempt should have been made, otherwise, perhaps, one thing which is best might not have occurred; and it is best that we should think all this for the best, even though it is not; because Hope, as Coleridge says, is a solemn duty, which we owe alike to ourselves and to the world-a worship to the spirit of good within, which requires, before it sends that inspiration forth, which im

cash. The boilers might now be going on contemporane ously with the casting, but I know that at present there is no remedy for this evil. Every person concerned is making exertions, and is in a state of anxiety to see the quick result of this undertaking. I have advanced about 140 crowns, but prudence prohibits me from going any farther.

"Henry will write to Mr. Shelley when the works are in a greater state of forwardness: in the mean time, he sends his best love to his good friends, patron and patroness, and begs his kind remembrance to Miss C.I remain, with sincere affection for you all,

"Ever yours,

"M. G."

presses its likeness and disinterested i

A different scen made the chief ch We see no one, as quiet, and we onl chance. Her dau cold, as the snowy out of love with blow; and C, write, is in a high is setting off to Vie

My £100, from explained, has not y is going to advanc months—all additio be needed, for the little of Florence. studying piece-mea Italy being the obse the degree in which which, that ideal intense yet so obscu in external forms.

Adieu.-I am an Give to him and tak whatever they may I cannot cease to re Most faithfully

I had forgotten much obliged to you, The Cenci, which ar by the next ship. departure. I have ji he don't think that he don't much like it the edge of his crit the exact and superfi

If Mr. G. is return with them.

LET

To HENR

MY DEAR HENRY, the correspondence, than to tell.

You know our ba uncorrected letters, ju me have them--I like it may be a little roug penal according to our

In the first place ought to have sent me

last billet. I am very happy to hear from Mr.
Gisborne, and he knows well enough how to interest
me himself, not to need to rob me of an occasion
of hearing from you. Let you and I try if we
cannot be as punctual and business-like as the best
of them. But no clipping and coining, if you
please.

Now take this that I say in a light just so serious
as not to give you pain. In fact, my dear fellow,
my motive for soliciting your correspondence, and
that flowing from your own mind, and clothed in
your own words, is, that you may begin to accus-
tom to discipline yourself in the only practice of
life in which you appear deficient. You know that
you are writing to a person persuaded of all the
confidence and respect due to your powers in those
branches of science to which you have addicted
yourself; and you will not permit a false shame
with regard to the mere mechanical arrangement
of words to overbalance the advantage arising
from the free communication of ideas. Thus you
will become day by day more skilful in the manage-
ment of that instrument of their communication,
on which the attainment of a person's just rank in
society depends. Do not think me arrogant.
There are subjects of the highest importance in
which you are far better qualified to instruct me,
than I am qualified to instruct you on this sub-
ject.

Well, how goes on all? The boilers, the keel of the boat, and the cylinder, and all the other elements of that soul which is to guide our "monstruo de fuego y agua" over the sea? Let me hear news of their birth, and how they thrive after they are born. And is the money arrived at Mr. Webb's? Send me an account of the number of crowns you realise; as I think we had better, since it is a transaction in this country, keep our accounts in money of this country.

We have rains enough to set the mills going, which are essential to your great iron bar. I suppose it is at present either made or making.

My health is better so long as the scirocco blows, and, but for my daily expectation of Mary's confinement, I should have been half tempted to have come to see you. As it is, I shall wait till the boat is finished. On the subject of your actual and your expected progress, you will certainly allow me to hear from you.

Give my kindest regards to your mother and Mr. Gisborne-tell the latter, whose billet I have neglected to answer, that I did so, under the idea of addressing him in a post or two on a subject which gives me considerable anxiety about you al. I mean the continuance of your property in the pritisn funds at this crisis of approaching

Florence, Oct. 28, 1819. MY DEAR FRIENDS,-I receive this morning the strange and unexpected news, that my bill of £200 has been returned to Mr. Webb protested. Ultimately this can be nothing but delay, as I have only drawn from my banker's hands so much as to leave them still in possession of £80, and this I positively know, and can prove by documents. By return of post, for I have not only written to my banker, but to private friends, no doubt Henry will be enabled to proceed. Let him meanwhile do all that can be done.

Meanwhile, to save time, could not money be obtained temporarily, at Livorno, from Mr. Wor Mr. G-, or any of your acquaintance, on my bills at three or six months, indorsed by Mr. Gisborne and Henry, so that he may go on with his work? If a month is of consequence, think of this.

Be of good cheer, Madonna mia, all will go well The inclosed is for Henry, and was written before this news, as he will see; but it does not, strange as it is, abate one atom of my cheer. Accept, dear Mr. G., my best regards. Yours faithfully,

LETTER XXVII.

To MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE

P. B. S.

Florence, Nov. 6, 1819. MY DEAR FRIENDS,-I have just finished a letter of five sheets on Carlile's affair, and am in hourly expectation of Mary's confinement: you will imagine an excuse for my silence.

I forbear to address you, as I had designed, on the subject of your income as a public creditor of the English government, as it seems you have not the exclusive management of your funds; and the peculiar circumstances of the delusion are such that none but a very few persons will ever be brought to see its instability but by the experience of loss. If I were to convince you, Henry would probably be unable to convince his uncle. In vindication, however, of what I have already said,

fr a shorty amrie, a aweed, the last of the national fent, fr no embination of the heatear tyranny can race the taxes for its mayment If he pensie conquer, the put ne creditor vd spiady m. for; for it a monstrous to marne that they wil about to the perpetual inheritaZCE of a double aristocracy. They will perhaps find where and church lands, and appropriate I the frhes to make a kind of compensation to the public creditor. They will confiscate the estates of their political enemies. But all this will not pay a tenth part of their debt. The existing government, atrocions as it is, is the surest party to which a public creditor may attach himself. He may reason that it may last my time, though in the event the ruin is more complete than in the ense of a popular revolution. I know you too well to believe you capable of arguing in this manner; I only reason on how things stand.

Your income may be reduced from £210 to 150, and then £100, and then by the issue of immense quantities of paper to save the immediate cause of one of the conflicting parties, to any value however small; or the source of it may be cut off at once. The ministers had, I doubt not, long since determined to establish an arbitrary government; and if they had not determined so, they have now entangled themselves in that consequence of their instinct as rulers, and if they recede they must perish. They are, however, not receding, and we are on the eve of great actions.

Kindest regards to Henry. I hope he is not stopped for want of money, as I shall assuredly Bend him what he wants in a month from the date

MY DEAR FA brought me a br hours' pain, and wonder that she quite well, and La magne that this comfort to me am present, and to est..

Since I last wr

have occurred, not which makes my pes one. The physician to England in the w you a visit in the among all the othe comfort with which I think of looking or earnest face, which It will be the only me, or will need to I shall come alone. worth all the trouble I will tell you n pursuits in my next l

Kind love to Ma children. Poor Mar to look a little conso you may imagine, a m Good-bye, my dear

Your affectiona I have had no letter

LETTER XXIX.

To MRS. GISBORNE.

Florence, Nov. 16, 1819. MADONNA, I have been lately voyaging in a sea without my pilot, and although my sail has often been torn, my boat become leaky, and the log lost, I have yet sailed in a kind of way from island to island; some of craggy and mountainous magnificence, some clothed with moss and flowers, and radiant with fountains, some barren deserts. I have been reading Calderon without you. I have read the "Cisma de Ingalaterra," the "Cabellos de Absolom," and three or four others. These pieces, inferior to those we read, at least to the "Principe Constante," in the splendour of particular passages, are perhaps superior in their satisfying completeness. The Cabellos de Absolom is full of the deepest and tenderest touches of nature. Nothing can be more pathetically conceived than the character of old David, and the tender and impartial love, overcoming all insults and all crimes, with which he regards his conflicting and disobedient sons. The incest scene of Amnon and Tamar is perfectly tremendous. Well may Calderon say in the person of the former

Si sangre sin fuego hiere, que fara sangre con fuego?

Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical circumstance. It may be the excess of love or hate. It may be the defiance of everything for the sake of another, which clothes itself in the glory of the highest heroism; or it may be that cynical rage which, confounding the good and the bad in existing opinions, breaks through them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and antipathy. Calderon, following the Jewish historians, has represented Amnon's action in the basest point of view-he is a prejudiced savage, acting what he abhors, and abhorring that which is the unwilling party to his crime.

Adieu. Madonna, yours truly,

P. B. S.

I transcribe you a passage from the Cisma de
Ingalaterra-spoken by "Carlos, Embaxador de
Francia, enamorado de Ana Bolena." Is there
anything in Petrarch finer than the second stanza.*

* Porque apenas el Sol se coronaba
de nueva luz en la estacion primeva,
quando yo en sus umbrales adoraba
segundo Sol en abreviada esfera;
la noche apenas tremula baxaba,
A solos mis deseos lisonjera,

quando un jardin, republica de flores,
era tercero fiel de mis amores

LETTER XXX.

To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR,-I envy you the first reading of Theocritus. Were not the Greeks a glorious people? What is there, as Job says of the Leviathan, like unto them? If the army of Nicias had not been defeated under the walls of Syracuse; if the Athenians had, acquiring Sicily, held the balance between Rome and Carthage, sent garrisons to the Greek colonies in the south of Italy, Rome might have been all that its intellectual condition entitled

it to be, a tributary, not the conqueror of Greece; the Macedonian power would never have attained to the dictatorship of the civilised states of the world. Who knows whether, under the steady progress which philosophy and social institutions would have made, (for, in the age to which I refer, their progress was both rapid and secure) among a people of the most perfect physical organization, whether the Christian religion would have arisen, or the barbarians have overwhelmed the wrecks of civilisation which had survived the conquest and tyranny of the Romans? What then should we have been? As it is, all of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes, of our youth. We are stuffed full of prejudices; and our natural passions are so managed, that if we restrain them we grow intolerant and precise, because we restrain them not according to reason, but according to error; and if we do not restrain them, we do all sorts of mischief to ourselves and others. Our imagination and understanding are alike subjected to

Alli, el silencio de la noche fria,

el jazmin, que en las redes se enlazava,
el cristal de la fuente que corria,
el arroyo que à solas murmurava,
El viento que en las hojas se movia,
el Aura que en las flores respirava;

todo era amor'; què mucho, si en tal calma,

aves, fuentes, y flores tienen alma!

No has visto providente y officiosa,
mover el ayre iluminada aveja,
que hasta beber la urpura a la rosa
ya se acerca cobarde, y ya se alexa?
No has visto enamorada mariposa,
dar cercos a la luz, hasta que dexa,
en monumento facil abrasadas
las alas de color tornasoladas?

Assi mi amor, cobarde muchos dias,
tornos hizo a la rosa y a la liama;
temor che ha sido entre cenizas frias,
tantas vezes llorado de quien ama;
pero el amor, que vence con porfias,
y la ocasion, que con disculpas llama,
me animaron, y aveja y mariposa
quemè las alas, y liegue a la rosa.