Abbey was ardently attached to his mother, and during her final illness was in terrible distress of mind. Toward the last, worn out with anxiety and watching, he lay down on a couch in the sick room, and at once went into one of his trances. This was at nine o'clock in the evening. The rest of the family, whispering together, declared that the sick woman, although unconscious, was better. "She will die," muttered Abbey, who was apparently far out of hearing, "at twenty-five minutes to four." His mother did die at twenty-five minutes to four the next morning. A thousand curious circumstances connected with poor Abbey are fresh in my memory, but I refrain from giving more. Although he was under the care of several of our best physicians, he was never long free from his malady. Strange to say, it never affected his general health. He died finally, not from any disease, but quite by accident. A. T. LITERATURE OF THE DAY. Byron. By John Nichol. (English-Men-of-Letters Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers. "The quiet, uneventful life of a man of letters" is a phrase not infrequently used, generally by way of excuse for some dull biography. It is doubtful, however, whether the life of the poet, the novelist, or even the scholar, is not apt to be quite as varied and full of incident as those of men whose callings are considered more active and adventurous, while the interest that attaches to the relation of it is almost certain to be more personal and concentrated. The career of the statesman or the warrior is commonly merged in the events of his time; that of the discoverer or the inventor furnishes matter for a chapter in the history of scientific progress; the mere "man of the world" is one of the least important figures in the shifting scenes and disconnected pictures of which his recollections may supply the only memorial. But the man of genius whose writings we have studied with a constant sense of the influence of mind upon mind--his mind upon ours, stirring our emotions, quickening our thoughts, enlarging our conceptions--becomes in his biography a subject for close investigation and analysis, in which every fact is significant, actions and impressions have equal importance, efforts and achievements, success and failure, are viewed as the direct outcome of character and intellect, all events have a common centre, and the world's affairs are noted only in reference to the individual, whether, like Rousseau, he has given them a strong impulse, or, like Dante, has been the victim of their turbulence, or, like Goethe, has stood apart in the attitude of contemplation. The office of such men is to reveal the needs and aspirations of humanity; their voices rise above the general din in musical plaint or exultation; their utterances lead us to examine and understand ourselves; and hence their lives, even when outwardly tranquil, cannot fail, if fully and rightly portrayed, to enchain our sympathies.