devotedly in the great and good work of the advancement of human
virtue and happiness, and stimulates us

"To love and hear--to hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates."

It is observed by Shelley that

"The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau,
and their disciples in favor of oppressed and deluded
humanity, are entitled to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it
is easy to calculate the degree of moral and intellectual
improvement which the world would have exhibited, had they
never lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked
for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women and
children burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have
been congratulating each other on the abolition of the
Inquisition in Spain."

The vast impetus, which these extraordinary geniuses gave to freedom
in metaphysical strongholds, led to a corresponding degree of liberty
in the political and social relations.

Shelley was not one who

"beheld the woe
In which mankind was bound, and deem'd that fate
Which made them abject, would preserve them so."

but on the contrary was aware of the progressive character of the