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His large consumption of opium.

and amidst the pleasures derived from the Lake scenery, a good library, and his beloved drug, led the life of a scholar, a dreamer, and a voluptuary. From 1804 to 1812 the baneful practice of consuming opium grew upon him by slow degrees; but in 1813 he increased the quantity and frequency of his doses so much, that he took 320 grains of opium, or 8,000 drops of laudanum daily. Prodigious as this quantity is, it is only half what Coleridge was in the habit of taking. But in both men the indulgence produced the same results, pecuniary embarrassment, bodily decay, and mental debility. De Quincey had been married five years, and had already three children, when, in 1821, he made a strong effort to throw off the indolence which had rendered his youth and early manhood useless, and commenced those literary exertions, by which he contributed in no slight degree to the comfort of those dependent on him, and enabled the world to see how much he might have accomplished if laudanum had not enfeebled his powers. He wrote the first portion of 'The Confessions' for the London Magazine in 1821; and from that time he used his pen with great, but fitful, industry on various publications,such as Blackwood's Magazine, Tait's, the North British Review and 'The Encyclopædia Britannica.' In 1832 he permanently took up his

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residence in Scotland; and there, in the land of his adoption, he expired, on the morning of Thursday, the 8th of this month......In many respects he resembled Coleridge, in his His love of classic literature and metaphysical to Coleridge. inquiry, in the diversity of his intellectual sympathies, and in his habit of minutely dissecting his own emotions; but he lacked the philosophic breadth and genuine Christian goodness of the poet. Coleridge could not reflect without agonies of remorse on the moral infirmities, which De Quincey, with as much flippancy as wit, wrote of as a condition bordering on jest.”

The year closes with a great loss to literature. A short paragraph on the last day of the year records that "at the moment of going to press, we hear of the death of Lord Macaulay. To Death of Lord Macaulay. the world of letters this loss is immense. Time only permits us now to express our profound sorrow at an event which deprives us of so great a man. Next week we shall try to present some outlines of his career."

CHAPTER IV.

ATHEN.EUM, 1850-1861.

Year opened brightly for every branch effort, “in somewhat singular conthe lowering of the landscape in the tated provinces of faith and politics." d the Mutiny was still a prominent and My Diary in India, in the Year by W. H. Russell, LL.D., is reviewed frst number of the year: "In the long, and acrimonious controversy about the - of Sindh the English public chose for their hero, and degraded Sir James the Bayard of modern times, into a pet knight. To such a height had this miserable dissension, that even the ding of the bravest of English braves was ested. The base slander died in the

sight of battle-fields in Oudh, yet even Sight might have been eclipsed, but for the erous sympathy of the Times Special Corredent and envy, dead though it be, has not ther failed of its purpose, since no cross

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of valour adorns the man who of all our Indian host best deserved that honour. On the 28th of January, 1858, Mr. Russell landed at Calcutta 'without prejudices to overcome or theories to support.'"

Mr. Russell while in the Crimea had first heard of the annexation of Oudh, "'which was represented not only as an act of the highest political wisdom, but also as a political necessity. Now, near the spot, I hear wise men doubt the wisdom-and see them shake their heads when one talks of the necessity-of the annexation.'......

"Hired pens had long drafted lengthy bills of indictment against the princes of Oudh as

Strange that tyrants

against every native ruler.
should have made an Eden of their home. Yet
we read,

"A vision of palaces, mirrors, domes azure and golden, cupolas, colonnades, long façades of fair perspective in pillar and column, terraced roofs-all rising up amid a calm, still ocean of the brightest verdure......There is a city more vast than Paris, as it seems, and more brilliant, lying before us. Is this a city in Oudh? Is this the capital of a semi-barbarous race, erected by a corrupt, effete and degraded dynasty? I confess I felt inclined to rub my eyes again and again."

The Athenæum in concluding the article says: "We have cited enough to show how the Special Correspondent of the Times became nverted to the opinions which have often, and g before he wrote, been exhibited in these

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The annexation of Oudh.

melancholy gaiety—and streets will rise where well-dressed folly so long and so riotously reigned,

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where Billington poured forth her honeyed notes and Incledon his linked sweetness,'where I Diavolo Antonio swung by one foot on the slack wire, pealing forth from a silver trumpet, as he swung, the overture to 'Lodoiska,' -and where the terrible gaieties of the night were succeeded by the terrible penalties of 'next morning.' What is to come for a week is the The "wake" wake' of a dead, not the reproduction of a Vauxhall. living, Vauxhall. The lights, and the drink, and the garishness will be there where the song of the old nightingales has long been silentfor ever."

of a dead

Leigh Hunt.

The

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James Henry Leigh Hunt died on the 28th of August. He was born on the 19th of October, 1784. In 1808 he joined his brother John in editing the Examiner, and it was on the 22nd of Examiner. March, 1812, that his article on the Prince Regent appeared for which he was indicted. The Athenæum, in the obituary notice of him which appeared on September 3rd, 1859, states: "Leigh Hunt wielded one of the most vigorous lances in the forlorn hope of Liberals, who, long before' Reform' was popular, fought against the civil and religious bigotry of the time. His articles in the Examiner denouncing the Prince Regent were as bitterly hostile as any that came

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