CHAPTER IV.

The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"-Shelley proposes returning to England-His schemes of travel-His visit to Chamouni-Description of Mont Blanc-The Mer de Glace-The Glacier de Boisson-The sources of the Aveiron.

BESIDES the poems already alluded to by Lord Byron, Shelley's beautiful little poem entitled a Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," was the result of this romantic voyage.

More than ever, amidst those scenes which intellect has adorned with many of its brightest and holiest attributes, he had become impressed with the conviction that:

"The awful shadow of some unseen Power,

Floats, though unseen, among us."

And, constituted as his mind eminently was for

such contemplations, it could not but receive here a new impulse, robed, as everything seemed to be, in the divine beauty of intellect and love. Indeed, it would be difficult to traverse such scenes and not to feel its reality.

It had impressed itself strongly on the less earnest mind of his companion, who, as we have seen, had come to drink deeply from the fountains of Spiritualism, and the thoughts which the beauty and the grandeur of nature had inspired found expression in harmonious verse.

Shelley's dreamy abstractions, frail and intangible as they sometimes appear to be, are here expressed in language not less ethereal, and the imaginative beauty of his philosophy floats over his verse like "hues and harmonies of evening." The allusions to his boyhood, wherein he depicts the awakening of his own geuins, gives to this poem its most touching interest; nor can anything be more beautiful than the concluding stanza :

"The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past: there is a harmony

In autumn, and a lustre in the sky,
Which thro the summer is not heard nor seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

Thus let thy power, which, like the truth
Of nature, on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply

Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,

Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind,
To fear himself, and love all human kind."

Notwithstanding the varied attractions which the natural beauties of Switzerland possessed, Shelley appears to have become affected with the maladie du pays, as will be seen by the following letter, written home to a friend in England, about a fortnight after his return from Vevai and Lausanne, and hitherto unpublished. He says:

"My opinion of turning to one spot of earth and calling it our home, and of the excellencies and usefulness of the sentiments arising out of this attachment, has at length produced in me the resolution of acquiring this possession.

"You are the only man who has sufficient regard for me to take an interest in the fulfilment of this design, and whose tastes conform sufficiently to mine to engage me to confide the execution of it to your discretion.

"I do not trouble you with apologies for

giving you this commission. I require only rural exertions, walks, and circuitous wanderings, some slight negotiations about the letting of a house-the superintendence of a disorderly garden, some palings to be mended, some books to be removed and set up.

to

"I wish you would get all my books and all my furniture from Bishopgate, and all other effects appertaining to me. I have written to secure all that belongs to me there to you. I have written also to L-to give up possession of the house on the third of August.

"When you have possessed yourself of all my affairs, I wish you to look out for a home for me and Mary and William, and the kitten who is now en pension. I wish you to get an unfurnished house, with as good a garden as may be, near Windsor Forest, and take a lease of it for fourteen or twenty-one years. The house must not be too small. I wish the situation to resemble as nearly as possible that of Bishopgate, and should think that Sunning Hill or Winkfield Plain, or the neighbourhood of Virginia Waters, would afford some possibilities.

"Houses are now exceedingly cheap and plentiful; but I entrust the whole of this affair entirely to your own discretion.

"I shall hear from you, of course, as to what you have done on this subject, and shall not delay to remit you whatever expenses you may find it necessary to incur. Perhaps, however, you had better sell the useless part of the Bishopgate furniture-I mean those odious curtains, &c.

"Will you write to L to tell him that you are authorised on my part to go over the inventory with Lady L-'s people on the third of August, if they please, and to make whatever arrangements may be requisite. I should be content with the Bishopgate house, dear as it is, if Lady L would make the sale of it a post obit transaction. I merely suggest this, that if you see any possibility of proposing such an arrangement with effect, you might do it.

My present intention is to return to England, and to make that most excellent of nations my perpetual resting place. I think it is extremely probable that we shall return next spring-per