and subjects of fancy, and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was universally delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular tradition. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens. Milton, too, in early life, lived in a similar dream-land, was fond of high romance and gothic diableries ; and it would seem that such contemplations furnish a fit pabulum for the development of poetical genius.

This constant dwelling on the marvellous, had considerable influence on Shelley's imagination, nor is it to be wondered, that at that age he entertained a belief in apparitions, and the power of evoking them, to which he alludes frequently in his afterworks, as in Alastor:

By forcing some lone ghost,

My messenger, to render up the tale
Of what we are ;

and in an earlier effusion :

Oh, there are genii of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees';

and again in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty :

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead,

I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed

I was not heard-I saw them not.

We

After supping on the horrors of the Minerva press, he was subject to strange, and sometimes frightful dreams, and was haunted by apparitions that bore all the semblance of reality. did not sleep in the same dormitory, but I shall never forget one moonlight night seeing Shelley walk into my room. He was in a state of somnambulism. His eyes were open, and he advanced with slow steps to the window, which, it being the height of summer, was open. I got

out of bed, seized him with my arm, and waked him-I was not then aware of the danger of suddenly rousing the sleep-walker. He was excessively agitated, and after leading him back with some difficulty to his couch, I sat by him for some time, a witness to the severe erethism of his nerves, which the sudden shock produced.

This was the only occasion, however, to my knowledge, that a similar event occurred at school, but I remember that he was severely punished for this involuntary transgression. If, however, he ceased at that time to somnambulize, he was given to waking dreams, a sort of lethargy and abstraction that became habitual to him, and after the accès was over, his eyes flashed, his lips quivered, his voice was tremulous with emotion, a sort of ecstacy came over him, and he talked more like a spirit or an angel than a human being.

The second or third year after Shelley's domicile at Sion House, Walker gave a course of lectures in the great room at the academy, and

displayed his Orrery. This exhibition opened to Shelley a new universe of speculations; he was, till then, quite ignorant of astronomy; looking upon the stars as so many lights in heaven, as flowers on the earth, sent for our mere gratification and enjoyment; but if he was astonished at the calculations of the mathematician, and the unfolding of our System, he was still more delighted at the idea of a plurality of worlds. Saturn, which was then visible, and which we afterwards looked at through a telescope, particularly interested him, its atmosphere seeming to him an irrefragable proof of its being inhabited like our globe. He dilated on some planets being more favoured than ourselves, and was enchanted with the idea that we should, as spirits, make the grand tour through the heavens,—perhaps, to use the words of Jean Paul Richter, "that as boys are advanced and promoted from one class to another, we should rise to a progressive state from planet to planet, till we became Gods." But if his mind was thus opened, he was not less

charmed at the chemical experiments, particularly with the fact that earth, air, and water are not simple elements. This course of lectures ended with the solar microscope, which, whilst it excited his curiosity, constituted to most of us little spectators the most attractive part of the exhibition. The mites in cheese, where the whole active population was in motion-the wing of a fly-the vermicular animalculæ in vinegar, and other minute creations still smaller, and even invisible to the naked eye, formed afterwards the subjects of many of our conversations; and that he had not forgotten the subject is proved by his making a solar microscope his constant companion, and an anecdote is told in reference to it, which places in a strong light his active benevolence :-"We were crossing the New Road," says Mr. Hogg, "when he said sharply, 'I must call for a moment, but it will not be out of the way at all,' and then dragged me suddenly towards the left. I enquired whither are we bound, and I believe I suggested the postpone