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mingled with the rest, as in the Roman Catholic version; or relegated to a separate division, as in the Lutheran; but afterwards they limited their grants to the exclusive circulation of Bibles without the Apocrypha................

copies issued.

"Since its commencement in 1804, the Bible Society has issued 27,938,631 copies of the Number of Scriptures, either as Old or New Testaments, whole or in parts......It has expended over four millions of money, rising from 6917. 10s. 2d. in the first year to 119,257%. 15s. Id. in the fiftieth. Such a society as this must needs be recognized as a great fact and a great power-an instance of English energy and Protestant zeal, of which we may well be proud, and from which we may hope much good."

On the 3rd of May, 1854, the fiftieth annual meeting was held at Exeter Hall, the Earl of Shaftesbury in the chair, when it was announced that the total nett receipts for the year had been 222,6597. 5s. 10d., which included the Jubilee Fund of 66,5071. 7s. 9d., and the Chinese New Testament Fund of 30,4857. 19s. 3d.

The Eighty-second Annual Report, ending March 31st, 1886, is a volume of nearly six hundred pages, containing sixteen maps, and giving a very detailed account of the work of the Society in all parts of the globe. It states that the amount received for the year was

Jubilee

meeting.

238,3917. 18s. 6d., while 4,123,904 copies of the Scriptures were issued, these being printed in 277 different languages or dialects. The total number of copies issued by the Society since its foundation amounts to 108,320,869,* the sum expended being 10,083,5517. 5s. Id. There have The Society's been only four Presidents. The first Lord Teignmouth was President for thirty years; Nicholas Vansittart, Lord Bexley, for seventeen years, followed by Lord Shaftesbury for thirty-four years, from 1851 to 1885 inclusive, when the Earl of Harrowby accepted the vacant chair.

Presidents.

Prof. Robertson Smith, in his article on Bible Societies which appears in the third volume of the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica,' states: "It is believed that there are altogether about 70 Bible societies in the world...... Right to print The monopoly of the right to print the Bible in the Bible. England is still possessed by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and her Majesty's printer for England......In Scotland, on the expiry of the monopoly in 1839, Parliament refused to renew the patent, and appointed a Bible Board for Scotland, with power to grant licences to print the Authorized Version of the Scriptures."

*The issue of kindred societies during the same period amounts to 74,256,299 copies.

the British

In the same number for November 19th the Flogging in abolishment of flogging in the army is thus Army announced: "Leigh Hunt and Douglas Jerrold abolished. should have lived to read the instructions this week issued by the Duke of Cambridge, which virtually abolish flogging in the British army. For many years these humorists fought against the lash in squib, and tale, and verse, on the ground of outraged sentiment and humanity; just as Mr. Erasmus Wilson, on a memorable occasion, still fresh in popular recollection, fought against it on medical and physiological grounds. The men of letters are gone to their rest without seeing the end of their toil. Mr. Wilson still lives to rejoice in the victory of his correct and generous principles. Abused by Government prints, a dozen years ago, as a mere scientific sentimentalist, it must be a proud satisfaction to him to find that the Commanderin-Chief has at length been constrained by the growth of public feeling to admit in practice that his theories were right."

Quincey.

An obituary notice of Thomas De Quincey Thomas De is given on the 17th of December. He had reached his seventy-fifth year, having been born on the 15th of August, 1785. His father died at the early age of thirty-nine, leaving his widow and six young children a fortune of 30,000l. and a pleasant seat in the outskirts of Manchester:

His

"De Quincey, unable to brook the control of impatience of control. the guardians appointed him under his father's will, and indignant at not being allowed forthwith to enter himself at Oxford, ran away from the Manchester Grammar-School with 127 in his pocket; and, after making a brief excursion in Wales, found himself in London, penniless and without a friend. Though only seventeen years of age he might, without any difficulty, have earned subsistence by his scholarship, for his classical attainments were so great and accurate, that his master had more than a year before with pride pointed him out to a stranger, and said: That boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one.' But it never even occurred to him to get bread by work. The only attempts. he made to keep off starvation were fruitless ones to raise money on the property to which he would be entitled on coming of age. What reader of The Confessions' has not, when

pacing the silent thoroughfares of town after midnight, thought of the boy who wandered In London up and down Oxford Street, looking at the without a long vistas of lamps, and conversing with the

friend.

unfortunate creatures who still moved over the cold, hard stones? Who does not remember how, overpowered by the pangs of inanition, he fainted away in Soho Square, and was re

His gift to

Coleridge.

stored to consciousness by a poor girl, who
administered to him a tumbler of spiced wine,
bought with the money which destitution had
compelled her to earn by sin? When his folly
had been amply punished by suffering, the way-
ward lad was restored to his family; and in the
Christmas of 1803, being then only eighteen
years of age, he matriculated at Oxford. His
University career extended over five years. In
1804 he was introduced to Charles Lamb.
Coleridge he did not know till 1807, when he
made the poet's acquaintance at Bridgewater,
in Somersetshire, and contrived to convey to
him, through Mr. Cottle's hand, a present of 300l.
This act of generosity on the part of De Quincey
should not be forgotten. It is true that the
time came when, reduced in health and circum-
stances by his pernicious habit of opium-eating,
he condescended to accept the charity of others;
and it is also true that he had the indelicacy to
allude in his writings to the service he conferred
on his friend; but his conduct on this occasion
was noble, though unwise. The gift was a con-
siderable part of his small patrimony, which had
already been much reduced by the expenses of
his Oxford life. From 1808 to 1829 De Quincey
passed nine out of every twelve months in West-
moreland. He took a lease of Wordsworth's
cottage, wedded a gentle and affectionate wife, Mar

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