where she was on a visit. She was born, I think,

in the same year with himself.

She was like him in lineaments--her eyes,
Her hair, her features, they said were like to his,
But softened all and tempered into beauty.

After so long an interval, I still remember Miss Grove, and when I call to mind all the women I have ever seen, I know of none that surpassed, or that could compete with her. She was like one of Shakspeare's women-like some Madonna of Raphael. Shelley, in a fragment written many years after, seems to have had her in his mind's eye, when he writes:

They were two cousins, almost like to twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins
Nature had razed their love, which could not be,
But in dissevering their nativity;

And so they grew together like two flowers
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in the purple prime.

Young as they were, it is not likely that they had entered into a formal engagement with

each other, or that their parents looked upon their attachment, if it were mentioned, as any other than an intimacy natural to such near relations, or the mere fancy of a moment; and after they parted, though they corresponded regularly, there was nothing in the circumstance that called for observation. Shelley's love,

however, had taken deep root, as proved by the dedication to Queen Mab, written in the following year.

To HARRIET G.

Whose is the love that gleaming thro' the world, Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?

Whose is the warm and partial strain,

Virtue's own sweet reward?

Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul

Ripen into truth and virtuous daring grow?
Whose eres have I gazed fondly on,
And loved mankind the more?

Harriet on thine :-
:-thou wert my purer mind-
Thou wert the inspiration of my song-
Thine are these early wilding flowers

Though garlanded by me.

Then press into thy breast this pledge of love,

And know, though time may change and years may

roll;

Each floweret gathered in my heart,

It consecrates to thine.

But the lady was not alone" the inspiration

of his song." In the latter end of this year, he wrote a novel, that might have issued from the Minerva Press, entitled Zastrozzi, which embodies much of the intensity of the passion that devoured him; and some of the chapters were, he told me, by Miss Grove.

In this wild romance there are passages sparkling with brilliancy. A reviewer-for it was reviewed, but in what periodical I forget-spoke of it as a book of much promise. It was shortly followed by another Rosa-Matilda-like produc tion, entitled St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian.

The Rosicrucian was suggested by St. Leon, which Shelley wonderfully admired. He read it till he believed that there was truth in Alchymy, and the Elixir Vita, which indeed entered into

the plot of the Wandering Jew, of which I possess a preface by him, intended for the poem, had it been published. He says:-"The opinion that gold can be made, passed from the Arabs to the Greeks, and from the Greeks to the rest of Europe; those who professed it, gradually assumed the form of sect, under the name of Alchymists. These Alchymists laid it down as a first principle, that all metals are composed of the same materials, or that the substances at least that form gold, exist in all metals, conta minated indeed by various impurities, but capable of being brought to a perfect state, by purification; and hence that considerable quantities of gold might be extracted from them. The generality of this belief in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire, is proved by a remarkable edict of Dioclesian, quoted by Gibbon from the authority of two ancient historians, &c." But if Shelley was at that time a believer in alchymy, he was even as much so in the Panacea. He used to cite the opinion of Dr. Franklin, whom

he swore by, that " a time would come, when mind will be predominant over matter, or in other words, when a thorough knowledge of the human frame, and the perfection of medical science, will counteract the decay of Nature." "What," added he, "does Condorcet say on the subject?" and he read me the following passage: "Is it absurd to suppose this quality of amelioration in the human species as susceptible of an indefinite advancement; to suppose that a period must one day arrive, when death will be nothing more than the effect either of extraordinary accident, or of the slow and gradual decay of the vital powers; and that the duration of the middle space, of the interval between the birth of man and his decay, will have no assignable limit?"" On such opinions was based the Rosicrucian. It was written before he went to Oxford, and published by Stockdale; the scene, singularly enough, is laid at Geneva, and from this juvenile effort I shall make some extracts in prose and verse, in order to show the elements of what it gave rise afterwards to—