Person Page - 592

Died at Quebec on the 8th of August, William Grant Sewell.
Mr. Sewell was born at Quebec, in 1829, and was educated for the bar. His grandfather, the late Jonathan Sewell, had been Chief Justice of Lower Canada. In the year 1853, he came to this city, and adopted journalism as his profession. He became translator and law reporter for the Herald, and discharged the duties of those posts with ability. Some six years since he left this paper and joined the editorial staff of the Times, remaining connected with that journal until January last, when his health compelled him to abandon work and go home to die. Four years ago he was attacked with tubercular consumption. Such was the strength of his constitution, and so vigorously did he struggle against the advances of the disease, that it was not until within a few months that his friends abandoned hope of his recovery. By the advice of his physician, he spent three winters in the west Indies, and beguiled his leisure by writing his "Ordeal of Free Labour in the British West Indies," by far the best book which has appeared on the subject of emancipation - a work so dispassionately and honestly written, that both pro and anti-slavery partisans have claimed the author as an ally, and both have drawn largely from its pages for arguments in the slavery controversy. His death has deprived the New York press of an able, honest, and most industrious member; it has robbed a very large section of journalists of an affectionate, faithful, and whole-souled friend. New York Herald.
We notice with deep regret the death of a young Canadian, who had already made his mark in literature, and who, had he been spared, would have risen very high in the scale of authorship. Of retiring habits, he felt himself unfitted for the rough-and-tumble of a lawyer's career, and his sound judgment, good taste, and excellent education, found apparently their appropriate employment in journalism, and in the more ambitious work which is noticed above. As the Herald says, Mr. Sewell's book on free-labour in the West Indies, - dedicated to Mr. Hincks, who showed great kindness to the invalid author when in the Bahamas, - was written in an eminently philosophic and impartial spirit, but yet with the warmest sympathies for oppressed and down-trodden humanity. It was warmly greeted by the English press, and it is universally regarded as a book having authority - by none more so than those who knew the author and appreciated the soundness of his judgment and the purity of his aspirations. Mr. Sewell was a member of a family noted for its ability, and had he lived, none of them would have risen higher than he. - Globe.