horror, to deadly resolution, and lastly to the elevated dignity of calm suffering, joined to passionate tenderness and pathos, is touched with hues so vivid and so beautiful that the poet seems to have read intimately the secrets of the noble heart imaged in the lovely countenance of the unfortunate girl.  The Fifth Act is a masterpiece.  It is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim proud comparison not only with any contemporary, but preceding, poet.  The varying feelings of Beatrice are expressed with passionate, heart-reaching eloquence.  Every character has a voice that echoes truth in its tones.  It is curious, to one acquainted with the written story, to mark the success with which the poet has inwoven the real incidents of the tragedy into his scenes, and yet, through the power of poetry, has obliterated all that would otherwise have shown too harsh or too hideous in the picture.  His success was a double triumph; and often after he was earnestly entreated to write again in a style that commanded popular favour, while it was not less instinct with truth and genius.  But the bent of his mind went the other way; and, even when employed on subjects whose interest depended on character and incident, he would start off in another direction, and leave the delineations of human passion, which he could depict in so able a manner, for fantastic creations of his fancy, or the expression of those opinions and sentiments, with regard to human nature and its destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master passion of his soul.

Note on the mask of anarchy, by Mrs. Shelley.

Though Shelley’s first eager desire to excite his countrymen to resist openly the oppressions existent during ‘the good old times’ had faded with early youth, still his warmest sympathies were for the people.  He was a republican, and loved a democracy.  He looked on all human beings as inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest privileges of our nature; the necessaries of life when fairly earned by labour, and intellectual instruction.  His hatred of any despotism that looked upon the people as not to be consulted, or protected from want and ignorance, was intense.  He was residing near Leghorn, at Villa Valsovano, writing “The Cenci”, when the news of the Manchester Massacre reached us; it roused in him violent emotions of indignation and compassion.  The great truth that the many, if accordant and resolute, could control the few, as was shown some years after, made him long to teach his injured countrymen how to resist.  Inspired by these feelings, he wrote the “Mask of Anarchy”, which he sent to his friend Leigh Hunt, to be inserted in the Examiner, of which he was then the Editor.