he indulged unweariedly, is well known; but at all times he was ready for sport, and could even trifle with his dearest plans, as in the flotilla of bottles and aerial navy of fire-balloons, all loaded with revolutionary pamphlets, which he sent forth on the Devonshire coast. His running about the little garden, hand in hand with Harriet; his impersonating fabulous monsters with Leigh Hunt's children, who begged him "not to do the horn;" and his favorite sport with his little temporarily adopted Marlow girl, of placing her on the diningtable, and rushing with it across the long room, are instances that readily recur to mind, and illustrate the gayety and high spirits which really belonged to him, and which perhaps the Serchio. last knew when it bore him and his boat on his summer-day voyages. This side of his nature ought to be remembered, as well as that "occasionally fiery, resentful, and indignant" quality which Godwin observed, and the intense and restless practicality of the impatient reformer, when one thinks of Shelley (as he has been too often represented) as only a morbid, sensitive, idealizing poet, of a rather feminine spirit. That portrait of him is nonsense, for he was of a most masculine, active, and naturally joyful nature.

After he left England for the last time, and took up his abode in Italy, principally, it would seem, because of the social reproach and public stigma under which he lived and by which he felt deeply wronged, he was not really much more fortunate in his company. The immediate reason for the journey was to take Byron's natural daughter, Allegra, to her father at Venice; the mother, Miss Clairmont, went with them, and, as it turned out, continued to be a member of Shelley's family, as she had been since his union with Mary. It is now known that the Shelleys were ignorant of the liaison both when it began in London, and afterward when they

But

first met Byron at Geneva; but Shelley had a warm affection for Miss Clairmont, whose friendlessness appealed to his sympathy, and he spent much time in Italy in trying to make Byron do his duty toward Allegra, and to soften the ill-nature of her parents toward each other. Byron's conduct in this matter was a powerful element in generating in Shelley that thorough contempt he expressed for the former as a man. though Shelley's most winning qualities are to be observed, and his tact was conspicuously called forth by their negotiations in regard to the child, yet the connection with Miss Clairmont was unfortunate. That it repeatedly drew scandal upon him was a minor matter; it was of more consequence that in his family she was a disturbing element, and Mary, who had disliked to have her as an inmate almost from the first, finally insisted on her withdrawal, but not until frequent disagreements had sadly marred the peace of Shelley's home. Mary, indeed, was not perfect, any more than other very young wives; and by her jealousies, and yet more, it seems, by her attempts to make Shelley conform to the world, especially in the last year or two, she tried and harassed him; and so it came about that his love took the form of tenderness for her welfare and feelings, and often of despondency for himself. Miss Clairmont was a source of continual trouble for him in many ways: she was of an unhappy temperament and hard to live with, but with his long-enduring and charitable disposition, and his extraordinary tenacity in attachment and perfect readiness to admit the least obligation upon him, proceeding from any one in trouble, he never wavered in his devotion to her interests and care for her happiness. It is a curious fact that Miss Clairmont, who lived to be very old, manipulated the written records of this portion of her life, so that her evidence is of very questionable worth, though better, one hopes, than

that of her mother, the second Mrs. Godwin, whose lying about the Shelleys was of the most wholesale and conscienceless kind.

As with Miss Clairmont, so in a less degree with others of the Italian circle. But we have already dwelt long enough upon the character of the people whom Shelley knew. It cannot be that they cut so poor a figure because of Shelley's presence, hard as the contrast of common human nature must be with him. It is observable, and it is in some sort a test, that he did not overvalue them. Hogg, Peacock, and Medwin were all deceived, if they thought he trusted them or held them closer than mere friendly acquaintances; there is no evidence that he felt for Williams or Trelawney any more than an affectionate good-will; toward Leigh Hunt he had the kindest feeling of gratitude and of respect, and for Gisborne and Reveley a warm cordiality, but nothing more. Mary he loved, though with full knowledge of her weaknesses, in a manly way; for Miss Clairmont he had a true affection; and he recognized poetically the womanly attractiveness in Mrs. Williams, who seems to have represented to him the spirit of restfulness and peace, in the last months of his life. But, at the end, his errors respecting men and things being swept away, his ideals removed into the eternal world, and his disillusion complete, the most abiding impression is of the loneliness in which he found himself; and remembering this, one forgets the companions he had upon his journey, and fastens attention more closely upon the man through whose genius that journey has become one of undying memory.

There is no thought of eulogizing him in saying that he represents the ideal of personal and social aspiration, of the love of beauty and of virtue equally, and of the hope of eradicating misery from the world; hence springs in large measure his hold on young hearts, on

those who value the spirit above all else and do not confine their recognition of it within too narrow bounds, and on all who are believers in the reform of the world by human agencies. He represents, let us repeat, the ideal of aspiration in its most impassioned form; and in his life one reads the saddest history of disillusion. It is because, in the course of this, he abated no whit of his lifelong hope, did not change his practice of virtue, and never yielded his perfect faith in the supreme power of love, both in human life and in the universe, that his name has become above all price to those over whom his influence extends. It is, perhaps, more as a man than as a poet merely that he is beloved; the shadows upon his reputation, as one approaches nearer, are burnt away in light; and he is the more honored, the more he is known.

It therefore passes our comprehension that Dr. Dowden should have thought it needful to adopt the apologetic and condoning tone which characterizes his work, or should have been unaware how often he is thus betrayed into a style which can only be described as patronizing. It is true that Dr. Dowden differs from Shelley in fundamentals of faith and opinion, but did this involve a treatment of which the prevailing mood is pity? Perhaps, however, one ought not to expect anything more than toleration from a biographer to whom many of his hero's beliefs and acts are heresies and errors, and in this respect Dr. Dowden's liberality and temper are remarkable. But it would be wrong to close even this insufficient and informal notice without expressing discontent with Dr. Dowden's general tone, and dissent from his unquestioning assumption that Shelley's intellectual and moral life was one long mistake. Disillusion it was, and we have indicated, by the single point of his acquaintances, the nature of it; but a life of disillusion and one of mere mistake are not to be confounded to

gether. Better fortune cannot be asked for a youth than that he should conceive life nobly, and, in finding wherein it falls short, should yet not fall short himself of his ideal beyond what may be forgiven to human frailty. Shelley's misconceptions were the conditions of his living the ideal life at all, and differed from those of other youths in face of an untried world only by their moral elevation, passion, and essential nobleness; he matured as other men do, by time and growth and experience, and he suffered much by the peculiar circum

stances of his fate; but in the issue the substance of error in his life was very much less than Dr. Dowden would have us believe. Shelley, at least, never admitted he had been wrong in the essential doctrines of his creed and the motives of his acts, though he had been deceived in regard to human nature and what was possible to it in society. He held the faith and led the life until he died; and the truth that he believed was in him still declares itself indubitably in words and deeds on which he stamped the image of himself.

Bit.

A Lenten IT is a hard philosophy which tells us that some must die for others to live. A much more cheerful kind is that which whets our appetite for our cup of Mocha and wheaten roll, as, with dim visions of plodding laborers in Arabia and Dakota, we half unconsciously say to ourselves that we must eat for others to live. But this condition of things is perhaps too commonplace to go under the name of philosophy. There is, however, a phase of the interdependence of men which sets. us thinking. The spirit of modern pessimism proves too much for us, and we decide that some must be superstitious and credulous for others to live.

Almost every housekeeper, even in Puritan New England, considers Friday and Fishday synonymous terms. When Lent comes, and the maid-of-all-work goes breakfastless to early church, gives up the use of meat, and is unable to do her work from physical exhaustion, even the most liberal-minded feels inclined to deplore the lack of common sense in some of the tenets of the Romish Church. It is hard to realize that the great nations of southern Europe should have

been obliged for centuries to substitute fish for meat during certain seasons, and we are wont to look upon the custom as an arbitrary and irrational use of human power.

no

But here comes in the interdependence, and then a glimmer of reason. It is a long step from the lazzarone sunning himself in the piazza to the Norwegian fisherman hauling his nets, longer geographically than it is in thrift, honesty, and industry; but the custom which will not sanction the use of meat by the one is a source of the other's scanty subsistence.

The legend says that as no flower could bloom, no bird sing, no grass-blade thrive, on those Arctic shores, the Lord created fish in countless numbers, and implanted in the hearts of men an affection for the sea and its barren, rocky coast. We know that far away to the south are the great Catholic countries of Italy and Spain, whither cargoes of salted cod and herring are sent by the hardy toilers of the polar sea, and that the keeping of fast days means that the gold of the orange and lemon goes in a harder coin to the courageous race who stand

guard on the northern outpost of our civilization. Republican - When middle-aged people Opera. talk about their early operagoings, their say consists in the main of how they once delighted in the voices of certain men and women. They will dwell upon the tenor of their day, and his singing of a particular song. They hear no such tenors now. The talk of the present generation, when in its turn it reaches middle age, will be another matter. To-day from parents and grandparents comes the lament for Mario and Malibran; it is Lohengrin we shall remember forty years hence, as we vent our distaste for the new fashion likely to have come in by that time. To inquire or care what that fashion is going to be seems somewhat idle. Its season will fall due, and audiences will be ready to pay and listen, as they were ready for the operas of the past, that could fill a house once where they empty it now. Our concern is with the present, and what fills a house to-day in our towns. By ill-luck the galleries do not pay for the opera. They never have. Their contribution has at times gone near to keeping it alive, but mostly it has not; and the opera may be fairly viewed as an object of charity from its cradle. It cannot earn its own living, and has been kept out of the poorhouse by its friends. This seems to be the commonest fate of art in any shape that it has hitherto assumed. Art is a pensioner; and emperors and popes and rich people in general have always looked out for it, while poor people in general have come in for the benefit. They look gratis at paintings for which Venice once paid out her ducats handsomely, and if it were needful there might be drawn a schedule showing that from Homer to Wagner art has oftenest been kept going by the long purses of its day. So to-day, the intricate form of art called opera flourishes under the protection of European governments, least

where least help is given to it, and most where it rests upon a firm annual subsidy. Owing to this support, the workingman in most German towns can pay something in the neighborhood of fifty cents, and enjoy himself listening to all the best operas there are. Had he to pay much more, he could not do it.

Whether this manner of spending money be sensible for us can certainly be discussed.

It is not to be denied that the conditions in our country are unlike the conditions of France or Germany. Americans are not so fond of music as are the people of those two nations; music is not one of their matters of course. But neither can it be denied that when a fair opera comes for a while to an American town, most of us go. Parquet and gallery are jammed with people. Since we live under a government as little paternal as we can make it, it is from the people as a community that help for a republican opera must come, must come as from the modern patrons of art. The appeal has been made.

There has of late presented itself, and asked for help, this object novel to American charity, a plan laid purely for public diversion, a National Opera Company, including players, singers, and dancers; and the community has been invited to subscribe its thousands for the support of these people.

Now if any man or woman who has money to give away does not think with France and Germany that opera is a worthy object, such person will find no attempt in these remarks to win her or him over. It would take a longer talking to than there is space for; and perhaps it is really his or her stern-minded ancestors to whom we should speak. The need of this sort of recreation to fill an evening for the hard-driven man will not seem so rational as it does to us, nor will our value of the ornamental because it is useful appear a wise one. If there is any one who feels that opera

may be a worthy object, but that hospitals are a worthier one, and that all he can afford goes to them, there appears to be nothing to say against so true a feeling. But citizens have raised other objections, some of which admit of reason and exclude prejudice.

The American Opera Company gives a ballet that has been censured as indecent. Could those who find it so know how little attractive to an American audience is the ballet of the present, with its mechanical capers, and its ungainly women in short gauze, who imagine they are dancing,-doing the graceful thing of which the proper sort of human body is capable, they would see that the "indecency" proves simply stupid, and that the ballet is on its last legs. They need not fear it; it is dying. A while ago, and the world produced great singers, vocalists of extraordinary range and agility. The mere beauty of singing carried to its uttermost pitch of development caused operas to be written exclusively to show it off. Now the singers of that stamp are gone, and with them their operas. The world is getting to like another kind of thing. So also a while ago were produced great dancers, and for their sakes La Sylphide and the whole class of pantomime ballets were elaborated. Now those dancers are gone; and though there survives an impetus that still carries the form of their art along, its spring of life is dried up, and the ballet is fast becoming a mere spectacular massing of colors. Ballet is going to bore Americans. There has been objection upon another moral score. Some persons have thought ill of establishing opera in America, because they know of the unwholesome atmosphere that hovers continually behind the scenes of grand opera in Europe. They therefore conclude that the life which its employees live fosters vice, and they do not wish to see made indigenous a growth of immorality hitherto exotic. But they do not look far enough back

for causes, when they think that this state of things is due to opera or to any other theatrical arrangement. It is the product of a civilization and a social code, and were every opera in Europe abolished to-morrow, it would merely continue somewhere else. Moreover, the people who have raised this objection fail to see that this community, in providing a company of chorus singers with an honest way of making their living by means of their natural gift of voice, thereby insures them a steady subsistence, likely to lead them clear of vice rather than into it. This point brings up another kind of objection.

Those who have had chances to observe the present tendencies of young women in this country say that a distaste for their natural lot in life seems to be what ails them. Whether the cause of this is a morbid desire for what they deem the genteel, or whether each one imagines herself to be an exceptional person, is no matter. It suffices to know that washing, cooking, ironing, and sewing are disregarded for the sake of playing upon the grand piano and similar accomplishments. That these girls may marry a man who cannot afford to keep a musical instrument and a household of servants does not influence, even if it occurs to them. They go to art schools and learn how to make little pictures, and they frequent conservatories until they have mastered a few of Beethoven's sonatas. This folly destines them to discontent and misery; for when their apprenticeship is over, nobody cares to hear them play, nobody would give them a penny for anything they could paint. This evil certainly exists, and those who struggle with it object to the American Opera Company's having or ganized for its benefit a conservatory of music. They think that the numerous young women who have been led to dabble in art had better not have a new chance to make fools of themselves. But there is a difference at the root be