With diminished means, and increas ing necessity for mental labour, domestic calamity now fell heavily upon him. His wife, the faithful partner of his joys and sorrows for nearly forty years, over-wrought by the anxieties incident to her position, became deranged. How one of his domestic heart and poetic sensibility must have felt this, the reader may conceive; but not the less did he manfully address himself to every duty which he could be expected to perform, until it was determined that her removal to York Lunatic Asylum was absolutely necessary to afford to the invalid a chance of restoration. Here she remained for some time, and so far improved as to warrant her re-conveyance home, where nothing which a wise affection could suggest was left untried to comfort or relieve her; but reason never resumed its sway; and, to the survivors, the bitterness of death was past before the summons came which called her to a better world.

It was during this season of severe suffering that a gleam of royal sunshine was cast upon the Laureat, by which, for a moment, his heart was revived. It was during the late Sir Robert Peel's short ministry in 1835, and is best explained in the right hon. baronet's own words:

"Sir Robert Peel to R. Southey, Esq.

"Whitehall Gardens, Feb. 1, 1835. "MY DEAR SIR,-I have offered a recommendation to the King (the first of the kind which I have offered), which, although it concerns you personally, concerns also high public interests, so important as to dispense with the necessity on my part of that previous reference to individual feelings and wishes, which, in an ordinary case, I should have been bound to make. I have advised the King to adorn the distinction of Baronetage with a name the most eminent in literature, and which has claims to respect and honour which literature alone can never confer.

"The King has most cordially approved of my proposal to his Majesty; and I do hope that, however indifferent you may be personally to a compliment of this kind, however trifling it is when compared with the real titles to fame which you have established; I do hope that you will permit a mark of royal favour to be conferred in your person upon the illustrious community of which you are the head.

"Believe me, my dear Sir, with the sincerest esteem,

"Most faithfully yours,
"ROBERT PEEL."

"This was accompanied with another letter markel private.

"Sir Robert Peel to R. Southey, Esq. "Whitehall, Feb. 1. 1835. "MY DEAR SIR,-I am sure when there can be no doubt as to the purity of the motive and intention, there can be no reason for seeking indirect channels of communication in preference to direct ones. Will you tell me, without reserve, whether the possession of power puts within my reach the means of doing anything which can be serviceable or acceptable to you; and whether you will allow me to find some compensation for the many heavy sacrifices which office imposes upon me in the opportunity of marking my gratitude as a public man, for the eminent services you have rendered, not only to literature, but to the higher interests of virtue and religion?

"I write hastily, and perhaps abruptly, but I write to one to whom I feel it would be almost unbecoming to address elaborate and ceremonious expressions, and who will prefer to receive the declaration of friendly intentions in the simplest language.

"Believe me, my dear Sir, with true respect, "Most faithfully yours, "ROBERT PEEL.

"P.S.-I believe your daughter is married to a clergyman of great worth, and, perhaps, I cannot more effectually promote the object of this letter than by attempting to improve his professional situation. You cannot gratify me more than by writing to me with the same unreserve with which I have written to you."

Nothing could be more handsome. The poet's reply was full of gratitude; but he did not hesitate one moment in declining a dignity which his means did not enable him adequately to sustain. When his reply was finished, he called his son, the present editor, into his study, and read it for him. He thus writes:

"Young as I then was, I could not, without tears, hear him read, with his deep and faltering voice, his wise refusal and touching expression of those feelings and fears he had never before given utterance to, to any of his own family. And if any feelings of regret occasionally come over my mind that he did not accept the proffered honour, which, so acquired and so conferred, any man might justly be proud to have inherited, the remembrance at what a time and under what circumstances it was offered, and the feeling what a mockery honours of that kind would have been to a family so afflicted, and, I may add, how unsuitable they would be to my own position and very straitened means, make me quickly feel how justly he judged, and how prudently he acted."

With diminished means, and increas ing necessity for mental labour, domestic calamity now fell heavily upon him. His wife, the faithful partner of his joys and sorrows for nearly forty years, over-wrought by the anxieties incident to her position, became deranged. How one of his domestic heart and poetic sensibility must have felt this, the reader may conceive; but not the less did he manfully address himself to every duty which he could be expected to perform, until it was determined that her removal to York Lunatic Asylum was absolutely neces sary to afford to the invalid a chance of restoration. Here she remained for some time, and so far improved as to warrant her re-conveyance home, where nothing which a wise affection could suggest was left untried to comfort or relieve her; but reason never resumed its sway; and, to the survivors, the bitterness of death was past before the summons came which called her to a better world.

It was during this season of severe suffering that a gleam of royal sunshine was cast upon the Laureat, by which, for a moment, his heart was revived. It was during the late Sir Robert Peel's short ministry in 1835, and is best explained in the right hon. baronet's own words :

"Sir Robert Peel to R. Southey, Esq.

"Whitehall Gardens, Feb. 1, 1835. "MY DEAR SIR,-I have offered a recommendation to the King (the first of the kind which I have offered), which, although it concerns you personally, concerns also high public interests, so important as to dispense with the necessity on my part of that previous reference to individual feelings and wishes, which, in an ordinary case, I should have been bound to make. I have advised the King to adorn the distinction of Baronetage with a name the most eminent in literature, and which has claims to respect and honour which literature alone can never confer.

"The King has most cordially approved of my proposal to his Majesty; and I do hope that, however indifferent you may be personally to a compliment of this kind, however trifling it is when compared with the real titles to fame which you have established; I do hope that you will permit a mark of royal favour to be conferred in your person upon the illustrious community of which you are the head.

"Believe me, my dear Sir, with the sincerest esteem,

"Most faithfully yours,
"ROBERT PEEL."

"This was accompanied with another letter markel private.

"Sir Robert Peel to R. Southey, Esq. "Whitehall, Feb. 1. 1835. "MY DEAR SIR,-I am sure when there can be no doubt as to the purity of the motive and intention, there can be no reason for seeking indirect channels of communication in preference to direct ones. Will you tell me, without reserve, whether the possession of power puts within my reach the means of doing anything which can be serviceable or acceptable to you; and whether you will allow me to find some compensation for the many heavy sacrifices which office imposes upon me in the opportunity of marking my gratitude as a public man, for the eminent services you have rendered, not only to literature, but to the higher interests of virtue and religion?

"I write hastily, and perhaps abruptly, but I write to one to whom I feel it would be almost unbecoming to address elaborate and ceremonious expressions, and who will prefer to receive the declaration of friendly intentions in the simplest language.

"Believe me, my dear Sir, with true respect, "Most faithfully yours, "ROBERT PEEL. "P.S.-I believe your daughter is married to a clergyman of great worth, and, perhaps, I cannot more effectually promote the object of this letter than by attempting to improve his professional situation. You cannot gratify me more than by writing to me with the same unreserve with which I have written to you."

Nothing could be more handsome. The poet's reply was full of gratitude; but he did not hesitate one moment in declining a dignity which his means did not enable him adequately to sustain. When his reply was finished, he called his son, the present editor, into his study, and read it for him. He thus writes:

"Young as I then was, I could not, without tears, hear him read, with his deep and faltering voice, his wise refusal and touching expression of those feelings and fears he had never before given utterance to, to any of his own family. And if any feelings of regret occasionally come over my mind that he did not accept the proffered honour, which, so acquired and so conferred, any man might justly be proud to have inherited, the remembrance at what a time and under what circumstances it was offered, and the feeling what a mockery honours of that kind would have been to a family so afflicted, and, I may add, how unsuitable they would be to my own position and very straitened means, make me quickly feel how justly he judged, aud how prudently he acted."

"Sir Robert Peel to R. Southey, Esq. "Whitehall, April 4, 1835.

"MY DEAR SIR,-I have resolved to apply the miserable pittance at the disposal of the Crown, on the Civil List Pension Fund, altogether to the reward and encouragement of literary exertions. I do this on public grounds; and much more with the view of establishing a principle, than in the hope, with such limited means, of being enabled to confer any benefit upon those whom I shall name to the Crown-worthy of the Crown, or commensurate with their claims.

"I have just had the satisfaction of attaching my name to a warrant which will add £300 annually to the amount of your existing pension. You will see in the position of public affairs a sufficient reason for my having done this without delay, and without previous communication with you."

We think this whole transaction highly creditable to the late Sir Robert; and feel a gratification in thus putting it on record, corresponding to the pain we felt in our strictures upon him in a former number. The truth

is, he was a good-hearted man, but utterly unfit, from constitution and temperament, for the responsible position in which he was placed, and in which he had no principle to sustain him. But he is now gone to his account; and we trust that when his errors as a politician are forgotten, his good deeds will be remembered.

Southey now felt, for the first time in his life, at his ease in the world. But, alas! the seat of life had been undermined, and the gleam of prosperity which fell upon him was like sunshine on a blighted tree. His long and anxious attendance upon his wife had now begun to tell upon him. While she lived, and as long as a necessity for exertion was felt, he was sustained by a sense of duty and affection. But, when all was over, the reaction was very great, and all who saw him felt that he was an altered

man.

His children were now, one by one, becoming settled in the world; and it is not strange that he should think of a second marriage as a solace for his bereavement, especially when he found

in Miss Bowles a lady of high genius, of a suitable age, and with opinions in all things corresponding to his own. His son is delicately, and, we are persuaded, judiciously abstemious of any observation upon his union, which soon followed, with that accomplished lady, and we shall follow his example.

His second marriage took place on the 5th of June, 1839, and a friend who saw him in London that same year thus writes:

"I have just come from a visit which affected me deeply. It was to Southey, who arrived in town to-day from Hampshire with his wife. He is (I fear) much altered. The animation and peculiar clearness of his mind quite gone, except a gleam or two now and then. What he said was much in the spirit of his former mind, as far as the matter and meaning went, but the tone of strength and elasticity was wanting. The appearance was that of a placid languor, sometimes approaching to torpor, but not otherwise than cheerful. lle is thin and shrunk in person, and that extraordinary face of his has no longer the fire and strength it used to have, though the singular cast of the features and the habitual expressions make it still a most remarkable phenomenon. Upon the whole I came away with a troubled heart."

A softening of the brain, which gradually progressed until a total insensibility supervened, soon put an end to all hope, "and," in the words of his affectionate biographer, "after a short attack of fever, the scene closed on the 21st of March, 1843, and a second time had we cause to feel deeply thankful when the change from life to death, or more truly speaking, from death to life look place.'

Our task is done. The reader who has followed us through these brief and hurried notices, will not need our estimate of the merits and services of this extraordinary man, whose reputation will grow even as that of more popular writers will decline, and whose comparative neglect by his cotemporaries will be richly repaid by the praises of an admiring posterity.

He and Wordsworth have been constantly classed together: but, except in the general purity of their sentiments, the moral ends at which they aimed, and their determination not to be fettered by vulgar conventionalities, they were probably more unlike than any two other men. The one lived in abstraction, and "was of imagination

all compact," brooding over the mysteries of our being until thought was enkindled into inspiration; the other shed a rain-bow radiance over ordinary life, taking man, as he is, with his good and his evil, eliminating the pure gold from the dross, vindicating the Providence by which we are placed in this state of trial, looking habitually to a world beyond the grave, and furnishing the motive and suggesting the means by which we might arrive at a happy immortality. If Wordsworth's was a life of more exalted, Southey's was one of more strenuous virtue. Upon all important subjects there was an almost identity of opinion between them. No little jealousies ever disturbed their perfect friendship, or

marred for a moment that ennobling sympathy which made them regard as a common property their common fame. In rising above the mists of faction and prejudice, both had to experience the same obstructions, and to both it was given to survive the efforts of cankered criticism and party spite, until they saw the effects of their writings upon the literature of their age, and felt, in the growing admiration which they experienced in their maturer years, an abundant compensation for their early trials, and a foretaste of those future honours which will gather around their monuments when the names of their defamers shall have been consigned to a cold oblivion.

AN Essay entitled Bhut Nibandh, or "The Destroyer of Superstitions regarding Daimons," was written last year, in the Guzerattee language, by Triwadi Dulputram Daya, a Shrimali Brahmin of Jalawar, and obtained the prize of the Guzerat Vernacular Society for 1849. An English translation of this work, from the pen of Mr. Alexander Kinloch Forbes, of the Bombay Civil Service, which faithfully preserves all the simplicity of the original, has since been published at the "Bombay Gazette" Press, and is probably in the hands of many of our Indian readers. It enters into very curious details regarding daimonology and popular superstitions among the Hindoos of Guzerat; and this subject, however apparently insignificant and undeserving of attention it may seem to those who merely skim the surface of things, or read only for amusement, will, by more thoughtful minds, be admitted to be one of very deep importance. Every additional fact that can be ob tained on the subject of daimonology, -not that daimonology which has become a mere poetical machinery, to

complicate the mystery and enhance the horrors of the old romance, or to add the zest of a pleasing terror to the tale which charms the winter fireside, but that which is recorded or witnessed as operating upon the belief and actions of living men, and affecting the current of actual life,-is an addition to the stores of our knowledge on one of the most obscure and profound problems which has presented itself for solution to the human mind. To those who may not at once look into the deep heart of things, and see at a glance the manifold connexions which link daimonological phenomena and theories with many of the highest intellectual, the deepest spiritual, the sternest practical questions which man has to encounter, and, if he can, to unravel, in his painful pilgrimage through time, we shall here suggest a few of the aspects under which the real importance of this branch of research may be appreciated.

1st. To the physician, as connected with a very extensive department of human suffering, daimoniac possession and bewitchment, whatever and how