Shelley, in his philosophy, accepted all this, with the full consciousness that in the end truth would prevail—­he yearned for the time when priest-led slaves would

                     “Cease to proclaim that man
    Inherits vice and misery, when force
    And falsehood hang even o’er the cradled babe,
    Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good,”

and for that epoch when “the Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the Deist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally sharing the benefits which arise from its associations, and united in the bonds of charity and brotherly love.”

With Shelley we can turn with delight to the gospels of the future, as of the ancient past; and the ramifications of the Trinity of a truly Rational Religion, Mature, Science, and Art, where we have, instead of idle prayers, addressed to gross material idols, or the impossible entities hitherto depicted in theological systems, a feeling of real satisfaction in learning how to live rather than to die, and in practicing virtue and benevolence for their own sakes, than for improbable rewards in the unsatisfactory hereafter, enunciated from the theological platform.

Like a true religionist, Shelley tells us that aspirations to “Madre Natura,” like the following, should be poured out in silent, grateful communion with Omnipresence, and not in temples made by hands: 

Spirit of Nature! here! 
In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers,
Here is thy fitting temple. 
Yet not the slightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze
Is less instinct with thee;
Yet not the meanest worm
That lurks in graves, and fattens on the dead
Less shares thy eternal breath. 
Spirit of Nature! thou! 
Imperishable as this scene,
Here is thy fitting temple.

From such a soul-inspiring altar should praises like these be raised, and with what sacred feeling would the pure worshipper revel “where spirits live and dream—­where all that is sweet in sound, or pure in vision floats on the air, or passes dimly before the sight,” for as the late Professor J.G.  Hoyt, in his essay on Shelley beautifully points out—­“To him everything was God, and God was everything.  Every place was peopled with forms of beauty and animated with living intelligences.  Hills and valleys, forests and fountains, were each thronged with presiding deities—­bright effluences from the Diving that stirred within, and shone above the whole.”

In leaving the first portion of my paper, I will make the following quotation from a remarkable article on Shelley in the pages of the National Magazine, which all minds unshackled, and free from prejudice, must acknowledge to be correct in the main, and which admirably sums up his efforts in metaphysical philosophy.  Our attention is called to the fact that we discover in all Shelley’s writings “a freer and