There is something so puerile and absurd in the enacting of dead letter laws, not worth the paper on which they are written, something so ludicrous in the attempt to do what is legally and logically impossible, that it requires an effort to treat the subject seriously. Every one knows that the personal liberty act, pending in the state senate, requiring in substance, an arrested fugitive slave to be liberated, when it appears he is held to servitude in another state, will have no influence upon a conscientious and upright officer or judge; that no decent advocate would dare to rely upon such a transparently void enactment; and that it would be kicked out of any decent federal or state court as a piece of impertinence. Every one knows that if the legislature should pass, as is proposed, an act granting fugitives from labor in sister states a jury trial, when the laws of the United States require such cases to be exclusively determined by United States officers, no honest judge could be found to empanel such a jury, or no honest jury to sit in a case over which they would have no jurisdiction; or that if treasonable judges and juries could be found, their action in the premises would be absolutely illegal and void. Every one knows that the correct principles which govern these cases have been settled by the national legislature, assented to by the North and the South, ratified by an immense majority of the people, and affirmed and definitely settled by the authoritative voice of the supreme court of the United States. In the face of these conspicuous facts, the sham lawmakers and political dodgers at Albany, attempt to enact a nullity, to pass a void law, to override

an act of congress by a state statute, and to put the state of New York in a hostile attitude towards the federal government. It is barely possible that legislators enough will be found to place the state in this surly, unmanly and undignified position the position of a barking dog who can't bite-but we are inclined to believe that the attempt, like the bills themselves, is a miserable sham, got up for the purpose of tickling the radical abolitionists, and gaining a little favor with the Garrisonians, Gerrit Smiths and Fred Douglasses, who openly oppose the laws of the Union and the Union itself. When the matter comes to a test vote we shall see if these fast republicans are really willing to humiliate and belittle the empire state by the passage of nullification laws as sneaking in spirit as they are practically impotent of accomplishing mischief.

DEATH OF LEIGH HUNT.

The steamer Anglo Saxon brings out intelligence of the death of James Henry Leigh Hunt, who died at London on the 20th of August. He was born in Middlesex, in October, 1784, and was partly American in descent, Stephen Shewell, of Philadelphia, being his maternal grandfather. His mother's aunt was the wife of Benjamin West, the celebrated American painter; his father was a West Indian, and the son passed his early youth in the West Indies, and at one time, we believe, resided in Philadelphia.

Young Hunt commenced his literary career at a very early age, being only eighteen when, in connection with

his brother John, he issued the first number of The Examiner which soon acquired great popularity. It was in this newspaper that he applied to the prince regent the witty epithet of "Adonis of fifty," for which offence the two brothers paid a fine of some $4,000, and were imprisoned for two years. His experiences in Horsemonger jail are related with much humor and pathos in his autobiography, published in 1850; and on the occasion of his imprisonment he certainly showed a great deal of pluck, as the government offered to remit the penalties if he would promise to make no similar attacks in future. He founded and edited at various times The Reflector, The Tattler, and The London Journal, and contributed also to the Edinburgh and Westminster Reviews. The Story of Rimini, his Autobiography, Men, Women and Books, Stories from the Italian Poets, and his shorter poems, including his famous Abou Ben Adhem, are the best known of his works in this country; but he was a very voluminous writer, and his contributions to the press during the past fifty years would fill a good sized library.

Hunt was a contemporary of the great modern litterateurs of Great Britain, and formed one of the few surviving links which connect us with the literary world of Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Rogers, Coleridge, Keats, and Southey; for, although in genius he equaled none of these, he yet belonged to their epoch and was to a certain extent associated with them. With De Quincey, now almost the sole survivor, he formed one of that illustrious galaxy of bright names which

made the early part of this century so illustrious in literature. He was at one time an intimate friend of Byron, Shelley and Hazlitt, with whom, as coadjutors, he established The Liberal in 1822, a short-lived periodical, of which only a few numbers were published. During the same year, he visited Italy with Lord Byron, and occupied the same house with him; but the friendship soon cooled from incompatibility of temper, and Hunt took revenge of his noble friend in a mean and malicious book called Byron and his Contemporaries, but which is now almost entirely out of print.

Leigh Hunt, although he can not be classed in the very highest rank of modern literature, leaves behind a name which will always be dear to the hearts of lovers of "books which are books." The expression of Charles Lamb reminds us of a kind of inexpressible resemblance between the prose writings of the two men; both possessed a lively fancy, an easy, almost colloquial style, and a wonderful power of word-painting; their essays are among the most genial and graceful contributions to modern literature; although Hunt's coldness of temperament and occasional exhibitions of selfishness are in strong contrast with Lamb's tenderness of heart and infinite sympathies with humanity. The best poems of Hunt, like Rimini, are graceful and highly finished, reminding one of Keats in their general style and rhythmical flow; but he lacked the genuineness of feeling and the poetic inspiration which made his younger contemporary so dear to the popular heart.

Mr. Hunt has been described as a delightful companion, retaining to old age all the vigor and vivacity

of youth; no one could listen to his conversation without delight. His religious belief was somewhat peculiar, and he might safely be classed among the leaders of the broad church. For many years he has enjoyed a pension from the government, and his son is now the editor of one of the leading literary periodicals in London.

DEATH OF DE QUINCEY.

On the eighth of December, Thomas De Quincey died at Edinburgh, near which city he has resided for the past sixteen years. For nearly fifty years he has been more or less of an invalid, and when lately his health was seriously affected, no especial alarm was excited, and his death was in a manner unexpected. That with his frail and delicate constitution, racked and torn by the most acute mental sufferings and agitations which the human mind ever underwent without losing its sanity, he should have lived to the ripe old age of seventythree years, is a remarkable fact; but it is stranger still that his intellect retained to the last its vigor and acuteness, and that the spirit which animated his diminutive and shriveled body, shone on his dying bed with the lustre and brilliancy of youth.

In the twenty or more volumes which De Quincey has left behind him, ample materials are furnished for an accurate picture of his strange and interesting life. Able to read Greek at the age of six, and to harangue an Athenian mob at fourteen, we find him at the latter age in an open quarrel with his guardian, a runaway