have known; but it need not be discussed here.
It is especially fortunate that the letters exhibit him after his boyhood, with its false starts, its follies and prejudices, its narrowness and confusion, was passed; of that time we get only a noble echo in his sad remembrance, amid his seeming failure, of the lofty purpose with which he had entered life, while we see the depth unconfused by the tumult of his soul. In these last years, it is true, the thwarting of his practical instinct was ending in hopelessness; but if the earthly paradise that was the faith of his youth was now fading away, he was lifting his eyes to the city in the heavens, and had acknowledged the vanity of seeking the ideal he knew, except in the eternal; he had worked out his salvation. Perhaps after all we do wrong to lament his death; with that tragedy, in which every thought of Shelley involuntarily concludes, his work as a quickener of the spirit was accomplished. More finished works of art he might have given to us; he could not have left a nobler or more enkindling memory. These letters help in the still necessary labor of clearing away
