The world will class men “in its coarse blacks and whites.”  Some mark Shelley with charcoal, others with chalk,—­the former considering him a reprobate, the latter admiring him as a high-souled lover of human happiness and human liberty.  But he was something of both together,—­and would have been nothing without that worst part of him.  He ran perversely counter to the lessons of his teachers, and acted in defiance of the regular opinions and habits of the world.  He was too out-spoken, like all genius; whereas the world inculcates the high practical wisdom of a shut mouth and a secretive mind.  Fontenelle, speaking according to the philosophy of the crowd, says, “A wise man, with his fist full of truths, would open only his little finger.”  Shelley opened his whole hand, in a fearless, unhappy manner; and was accordingly punished for ideas which multitudes entertain in a quiet way, saying nothing, and living in the odor of respectable opinion.  With a mind that recoiled from anything like falsehood and injustice, he wanted prudence.  And as, in the belief of the matter-of-fact Romans, no divinity is absent, if Prudentia be present, so it still seems that everything is wanting to a man, if he wants that.  Shelley denied the commonly received Divinity, as all the world knows,—­an Atheist of the most unpardonable stamp,—­and has suffered in consequence; his life being considered a life of folly and vagary, and his punishment still enduring, as we may perceive from the tone and philosophy of his biographers, or rather his critics, who, not being able to comprehend such a simple savage, present his character as an oddity and a wonder,—­an extravaganza that cannot be understood without some wall of the world’s pattern and plastering to show it up against.

It is, to be sure, much easier and safer to regard Shelley’s career in this way than to justify it, since the customs and opinions of the great majority must, after all, be the law and rule of the world.  Shelley’s apologist would be a bold man.  Whether he shall ever have one is a question.  At all events, he has not had a biographer as yet.  His widow shrank from the task.  Of those familiar friends of his, we can say that “no man’s thought keeps the roadway better than theirs,” and all to show how futile is the attempt to measure such a man with the footrule of the conventions.  Shelley was a mutineer on board ship, and a deserter from the ranks; and he must, therefore, wait for a biographer, as other denounced and daring geniuses have waited for their audience or their epitaph.

CLARIAN’S PICTURE.

A LEGEND OF NASSAU HALL.

“Turbine raptus ingenii.”—­Scaliger

[concluded.]

The next morning there was queer talk about Clarian.  Mac and I stared at each other when we heard it at breakfast, but still kept our own counsel in silence.  Some late walkers had met him in the moonlight, crossing the campus at full speed, hatless, dripping wet, and flying like a ghost.