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the British

Army

In the same number for November 19th the Flogging in abolishment of flogging in the army is thus 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 friend. long vistas of lamps, and conversing with the

without a

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

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 wayward lad was restored to his family; and in the Christmas of 1803, being then only eighteen years of age, he matriculated at Oxford. 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. His gift to Coleridge. 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 circumstances 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 considerable 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 Westmoreland. He took a lease of Wordsworth's cottage, wedded a gentle and affectionate wife,- Mar

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 arly 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

His resemblance

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 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."

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