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PERCEVAL W. BANKS.
This gentleman—better known as Morgan Rattler of “Fraser’s Magazine”—died in London on the 13th of August. Mr. Banks, though only in his forty-fifth year, was the last of the race of writers, who, with Dr. Maginn, Mr. Churchill, and others, gave a sting and pungency (of a vicious and unwholesome kind however), to the early numbers of that journal. He seldom did justice to his own talents, for he wrote too often in haste, always at the last moment, and too rarely with good taste. He was by profession a barrister. The world at large, who admired the sportive fancy, classical eloquence, and kind yet firm criticism of poor Morgan Rattler, in his later years, will regret the early decease of one so gifted.
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ROBERT HUNT.
Mr. ROBERT HUNT, the eldest brother of Mr. Leigh Hunt, often mentioned in the “Autobiography,” is dead. He was lately nominated by the Queen to the brotherhood of the Charter house, but has not lived very long to enjoy the royal bounty. He was seventy-six years old when he died.
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JOHN COMLY.
JOHN COMLY, an eminent minister of the Society of Friends, died on the 17th of August at Byberry in Pennsylvania, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. “Comly’s Spelling-Book,” and “Comly’s Grammar,” have to thousands now living made his name “familiar as household words.”
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BISHOP BASCOMB.
THE REV. DR. BASCOMB, long eminent for various abilities, and most of all for a brilliant and effective elocution, died at Louisville, Ky., on the 9th of August. He was editor of the Southern Methodist Quarterly Review, and one of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
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COUNT PIRE.
GENERAL COUNT PIRE, one of the most distinguished officers of the French Empire, died recently. He fought as a private soldier of the National Guard of Paris, on the barricades, against the insurgents of June, 1848.