The Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D. president of the Wesleyan University, died at Middletown on the 16th of August. He was a native of Vermont, and was educated at Middlebury College. He entered the itinerant ministry in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1824, uniting himself with the South Carolina conference. His next two years were spent in Charleston. His labors proved too severe, and in 1826 he became what is called in the Methodist Church a supernumerary, with permission to travel for the benefit of his health. He was a local preacher for the same reason until 1828, but in 1829 resumed his itinerant labors. In 1832 he was again compelled to relinquish the labors the itinerancy imposed, and was appointed by the Georgia conference a professor in Franklin College. In 1833 he was elected president of Randolph College, Macon, Geo., which position he held until elected President of the Wesleyan University. In 1837 he travelled in Europe and the East, and on his return published an account of his Travels, in two volumes, which were very popular.
Baron de Ledeirir, the celebrated Russian botanist, died at Munich on the 23d of July, aged sixty-five. At the early age of nineteen he was appointed Professor of Botany in the University of Dorpat, and in 1820 he obtained the botanical chair in the University of St. Petersburg. In 1821 he was elected member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, and by order of the Emperor Alexander undertook to compile the Russian Flora. To collect materials for this great work he spent sixteen years in visiting different parts of the vast Empire of Russia, and went as far as the frontiers of China and into Siberia. In 1848 the state of his health obliged him to take up his residence at Munich. There he labored at his Flora, and had the satisfaction of completing it two months before his death.
Edward Quillinan, son-in-law to Wordsworth, and known in the select rather than in the wide world of letters, as a poet, a scholar, a contributor to more than one literary publication, and the author of one or two separate works, died in July.
Harriet Lee, the celebrated writer of the "Canterbury Tales," was the youngest sister of Sophia Lee, the author of The Recess, and of many popular dramas and novels. These ladies were daughters of John Lee, who had been bred to the law, but became an actor of much repute at Covent Garden Theatre, and ended his life as manager of the Bath Theatre. Sophia Lee, the elder daughter, who was born more than one hundred years ago (her sister Harriet, the subject of this notice, being a few years her junior), produced, in 1780, a comedy, entitled, "The Chapter of Accidents," which was performed with considerable success. The profits enabled the two sisters to open a school at Bath, which they carried on for many years with high credit and prosperity. In 1782 Sophia Lee brought out her most popular novel, The Recess, which was followed by other tales, and by Almayda, Queen of Grenada, a tragedy, in which Mrs. Siddons acted. Soon after, Harriet Lee published the first five volumes of her Canterbury Tales. Two of the stories, The Young Lady's Tale, and the The Clergyman's Tale, were written by her sister Sophia; the rest by herself. One of these Canterbury Tales, by Harriet Lee, named Kruitzner, became afterwards famous for having formed the subject and the plot of Byron's gloomy tragedy of Werner. Harriet Lee's other principal works were the Error of Innocence, a novel; the Mysterious Marriage, a play; Clara Lennox, a novel; and a New Peerage, begun in 1787. The last days of the sisters were passed near Bristol, where Sophia died in 1824, and Harriet on the first of August, 1851.
Dr. Julius, the author of an able work on the Prisons and Criminal Law in the United States, died about the end of July, in London. Dr. Julius was editor of the Berlin Zeitungshalle during the revolution of 1848, and was greatly respected for his talents and courage. Kinkel pronounced a touching oraison funebre over his grave.